


as the winter frost melted in our hands

by Spikedluv



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, background pairing: clint barton/phil coulson, cameo: kate bishop, cameo: lucky, cameo: pepper potts, minor crossover fandom: agents of shield, minor crossover fandom: hawkeye, wolf!Bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-14 01:04:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 48,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11197218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spikedluv/pseuds/Spikedluv
Summary: Steve is taking some time in Fury’s cabin to adjust to the fact that he woke up in the 21st century when he sees a startling sight: a wolf that looks just like his long-lost friend Bucky.  The wolf doesn’t appear to recognize Steve, but Steve just found a reason for being alive in this time: to find out everything that happened with HYDRA and Bucky and determine if Bucky survived the fall from the train.When The Asset encounters Steve Rogers he feels a sense of familiarity.  As he continues to regain his memories he realizes that the mission he’s been assigned by his handlers (to capture or kill Captain America) clashes with an overriding primary imperative: Protect Steve Rogers at all costs.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story begins soon after Steve wakes up at the end of CA:TFA and immediately goes AU (though technically it went AU when Bucky was experimented on by Zola). 
> 
> Written for [CapReverseBB on Tumblr](https://capreversebb.tumblr.com/). 
> 
> Title taken from David Cook’s ‘From Here To Zero.’
> 
> My deepest gratitude and heartfelt thanks to Ariss_tenoh and M_lasha for taking the time to read this fic and help me to make it better. All remaining mistakes are mine because I didn’t heed all of their very good advice and I added more words after they saw the presumably finished product. Thank you so, so much!
> 
> So many thanks to Kinkajou, who created the artwork that inspired this story. Given the number of people participating in this RBB I had resigned myself to not getting any of the artwork I liked (even though I’d picked, like, fifty of them), and instead got this art on my first claim attempt (thanks so much to my proxy). I was thrilled to get this piece of art and pretty danged excited to write a story centered around wolf!Bucky. Additionally, she has created story a illustrations which is just incredible! And last, but not least, she was a wonderful cheerleader for my first attempt at writing Steve/Bucky, and I am indebted to her for that. You should check out her [art post](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11197806) and give her lots of love.
> 
> Posted: June 14, 2017
> 
>  
> 
> [](http://imgur.com/ogBY1N0)   
> 

The Asset woke quickly, although he waited a while before he made the doctors who were assisting him with the adjustment from Cryostasis to Active Status aware of it. He’d learned early on that waking too suddenly put them on edge, and this way he was able to judge the atmosphere in the room before he alerted them to the fact that he was conscious. That small window allowed him to gauge just how much shit had hit the fan while he was in cryo, since he was normally only brought out to handle the missions that were urgent or time-sensitive.

Today, every word the doctors spoke, every action they took, emitted an unusual level of excitement.

From the moment his eyelids fluttered the Asset was fussed over by a team of doctors. His vitals were monitored, he was fed a nourishing-but-tasteless gruel that wouldn’t upset his stomach, and he was re-hydrated with a saline drip. Once he’d been cleaned up and dressed, the Asset was taken to his handler. There was an undercurrent of excitement in the briefing room, also, which made his recon-only mission a puzzle.

“The man in the photo,” the Asset said, indicating one of the photos tacked to the board at the front of the room. “Who is he?”

“That’s above your need to know, soldier,” the Asset’s handler told him.

Someone in the room laughed. The Asset committed the sound to memory.

The Asset was loaded into one of a matching set of SUVs with a strike force. He briefly thought it was overkill for a recon-only mission, but he didn’t voice the thought or let it play over his features. He didn’t get paid to think, he’d been told once. Someone had laughed then, too.

They drove for one hour, fifty-seven minutes, and twelve seconds, taking smaller and smaller roads. The Asset had been transported to their current location while he was still in cryo, and only brought out now when they needed him for this mission. If he hadn’t been shown a map of the area surrounding Bell Lake in Kabetogama State Forest in northern Minnesota to memorize before they left the base outside Grand Rapids, the Asset would have had no idea where they were.

The SUVs turned onto an old logging road and pulled over. Everyone spilled out of the vehicles, and they stood in a circle around the Asset while he removed his boots and uniform. It was less to make sure he wasn’t seen than to make sure he did as he was told. The Asset wondered if he, rather than the mission, was the reason an entire strike team had been sent. He didn’t let the sense of satisfaction he felt show on his face.

“Preobrazovyvat,” commanded the team leader who’d been assigned as his handler for this mission.

The Asset closed his eyes and willed his body to transform, and after several painful moments of bones relocating and muscles twisting (that was still less painful than the punishment if he hesitated), the Asset dropped to his paws and stood before them in his wolf form.

The Asset could smell their nervous sweat, hear the creak as their fingers tightened on the grip of their weapons, but he stood still and allowed his handler to place the muzzle on him. The slightest indication that he might resist earned him a beating and the chair, and so the Asset had learned to appear as non-threatening as he could while in this form.

“Idti,” the handler ordered.

The Asset remembered the map, knew how close the various roads had brought them to the target, and he took off into the woods, heading for the cabin on the lake that had been marked with a large red ‘X’ on the map.

It was dark, night had fallen before they left the base. The Asset had good eyesight in his human form, and still better in his wolf form, so the glow from the moon through the thick canopy of leaves was more than sufficient to light his way. He moved silently; even so he heard the skitter of small animals scurrying out of his path.

The Asset’s paws slowed when he reached the edge of the woods. He stood a moment, listening, watching, and then he circled the cabin, staying back far enough so that he didn’t trip the security measures that he saw, and those which they didn’t want him to see. He noted the placement of cameras and lights, trip wires and sensors.

When the Asset had made a full circle and returned to the point where he’d begun, he sat on his haunches and waited. The moonlight faded as the sun began to rise, but the Asset was still well-hidden in the shadows of the trees.

There was movement inside the cabin, and still the Asset waited with a patience that had been trained into him. Finally a man emerged from the cabin. The Asset recognized him as the man in the photos from the briefing. In those pictures he’d been wearing a uniform and now he merely wore a t-shirt and jeans. The blond hair, the blue eyes, and the muscles were all the same, though.

The man picked up an ax and started chopping wood. There was a large pile of kindling, so he’d been at it for some time, and given the size of the tree he’d dragged into the yard, would be for some time yet.

His mission complete, the Asset prepared to depart, but a scent caught his attention and he paused. The scent was . . . familiar, though he’d never been here before. Not that he remembered. The Asset shook his head as if he could clear the scent from his nostrils.

In this form his senses were even sharper, and the tantalizing scent only grew stronger. It took the Asset a moment to realize that the scent increased the longer the man worked, and that it must come from him. If the scent was familiar, then so was the man.

The Asset was so shocked by this realization that he put a paw down wrong and a small twig cracked under his weight. The sound of it shouldn’t have traveled that far, but the man’s head came up and he looked in the Asset’s direction.

“Who’s there?” the man called out.

The Asset could leave now, melt into the shadows and disappear between the trees, but the man would suspect he’d been observed. The Asset didn’t berate himself for allowing himself to be heard, merely made the logical choice that would put the man’s mind at ease. A wolf would not be an uncommon sight in these woods, and from this distance the man would not see the muzzle that marked him as something more.

The Asset stepped out of the shadow thrown by the trees and allowed the man to spot him. Just as he did so a beam of sunlight struck him, highlighting the hues of his fur. The man, who’d seemed initially lulled by the sight of the wolf, now looked stunned.

“Bucky?” the man said, sounding as if he couldn’t believe his eyes.

The words carried easily to the Asset. He tilted his head and thought, _Who the hell is Bucky?_

The man went pale. _Buck?_ he said.

No, the Asset realized, the man’s lips hadn’t moved; he’d _thought_ it. And the Asset had heard him.

At first the Asset couldn’t make his paws move, but then, his heart pounding so hard he thought it might beat right out of his chest, the Asset turned and ran, racing across a bed of dead leaves and leaping over fallen logs in a rush to return to the place where he’d left the SUVs. Back to the familiarity of being the broken one whose mind couldn’t be reached.

The soldiers heard him coming, and they raised their rifles. As soon as he reached the clearing, the Asset shifted back to his human form. The soldiers all relaxed; sometimes they forgot that he was just as deadly in this form. Naked, the Asset gave his report: the man in the photos was at the cabin. His handler smiled and the soldiers made pleased sounds.

The Asset didn’t ask again who the man was; they wouldn’t tell him anyway, and given what happened when the man had seen him the Asset didn’t want to show too much interest in the mission. He was allowed to redress himself, then they all piled back into the SUVs and began the journey back to base.

Yesterday when he’d woken the Asset had felt something in the air. At the time he’d thought it was the excitement of the doctors, of his handlers, but now he wondered if it hadn’t been something else. The Asset had never felt the touch of another mind, neither those of his handlers or of his fellow soldiers. Until today. Why now? The Asset closed his eyes and pretended to sleep, although his mind churned with questions.

Once he’d made his report to his handler back at the base – the target’s movements, the security at the cabin – the Asset was turned over to the doctors again. They ran tests to make sure he was still healthy after the mission, and through it all the Asset complied. He let his eyelids drop closed and fell into a meditative state, and the doctors forgot he was there. Or they didn’t think his presence mattered.

They chattered like magpies about someone called Captain America and Steve Rogers. The Asset couldn’t tell if they were the same person or not. Earlier, when he’d been escorted out of the briefing room, voices had raised behind him and he’d tensed, but there was joyful surprise in his voice when the Asset’s handler said, “They’ve actually found him!”

The Asset tried to piece it together, but the puzzle was still missing too many pieces.

They fed him once more, and put him in a room to sleep, but the Asset was afraid to close his eyes. Each time he did he saw the man, the expression on his face when he thought he recognized the Asset, when he’d called out a name: Bucky.

~*~*~*~

Steve dropped the ax and ran after the wolf, after Bucky, but he knew he wouldn’t catch him. Bucky had always been too fast, even with Steve’s enhanced speed. And Steve wasn’t a tracker, that had always been Bucky’s strong suit.

Panting, Steve stopped running. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and took a moment to catch his breath. He wanted to keep going, but the wooded area was expansive and Steve had no idea in which direction Bucky had gone. Discouraged, Steve made his way back to the cabin.

Steve noticed that his hands were shaking. He poured himself a glass of orange juice and drank it down. His hands didn’t stop shaking. Bucky was alive. But how? Steve could still hear the screams as Bucky fell from the train; Bucky’s and his own. Even when his ears could no longer pick it up, Steve heard it inside his head. He’d heard it for days afterwards, weeks, until he’d put the plane down in the ocean.

When they’d pulled him out of the ice his mind had been silent. Steve had been sorry they’d found him, sorry they’d been able to revive him. For him it had been as if only a day had passed, but after seventy years there was no chance that he’d ever hear Bucky’s voice inside his head again outside of his nightmares.

Steve remembered the night in camp when Bucky had told him about the experiments, confided in him about what HYDRA had done to him. “They changed me,” Bucky had said.

“They changed me, too,” Steve said, hoping to earn himself a smile.

“It’s not the same. They didn’t make you better, you were already too good as it was, they just made you _more_. They turned me into a monster.”

“Don’t say that,” Steve had said, not knowing what they’d done to Bucky, not caring. He was alive, and he was still Bucky.

Bucky had stood up from the cot and started taking off his clothes.

“Um, Buck,” Steve said, looking around. They were inside their tent, but anyone could walk in. “I don’t think this is the time . . .”

“Get your mind out of the gutter, Stevie,” Bucky said. And then he shifted into a wolf.

Steve hadn’t screamed, although there might’ve been a little bit of a squeak. Bucky had just changed into a wolf, for goodness sake!

“Buck,” Steve said, “Bucky?”

The wolf rolled its eyes.

“Oh, give me a break,” Steve said. “I’m sorry that you shifting into a wolf was unexpected.”

Steve reached out and cautiously ran his hand down Bucky’s back. The fur was softer than it looked, and so many colors with the flame from the lamp dancing over it. Steve closed his fingers in Bucky’s fur, and then he went to his knees and wrapped his arms around him and buried his face in the fur. Steve didn’t try to stop the tears. “I’m so sorry, Buck. I wish I’d gotten there before they hurt you, but I hope you know it doesn’t matter to me. I still love you, no matter what they did to you.”

_Ditto, pal_ , Bucky said with his usual level of sarcasm, which is how they realized that Bucky could communicate telepathically, at least with Steve.

They didn’t tell anyone in command, not even Peggy, for which Steve had felt bad. They agreed to tell the Howling Commandos because they’d notice a wolf doing their tracking, and besides, they’d been there, they’d seen the experiments, they understood. They’d pledged their silence.

Now Steve wondered if he’d seen a wolf at all, or if it had been a hallucination. Could he have imagined the sound of the twig snapping, the wolf stepping out of the tree line, the way it had spoken inside Steve’s head, the muzzle . . .

Wait. Why would I have imagined a muzzled wolf, even if I was hallucinating Bucky? Steve thought. Wolves weren’t muzzled, and Bucky had never been back then.

If Bucky was real, and that was obviously a very big if, what had he been doing there? Was it a coincidence that he showed up at the same cabin where Steve was hiding out, trying to come to terms with the fact that he’d been resurrected? But if he was real, maybe Steve wasn’t the only one who’d seen him.

Steve went to the wall of security monitors and opened the cabinet doors hiding them. Steve had no idea how the system worked. He called the number Nick Fury had left for him and the phone was answered on the second ring.

“What’s wrong?” Fury barked.

Steve explained to Fury what he wanted, and there was a moment of silence before Fury said, “You want me to tell you how to check the security feed because you think you saw a wolf?”

“Yes,” Steve said.

To his credit, Fury talked Steve through the process and Steve hung up so he could watch the recording in peace. There was no sign of the wolf, but there wouldn’t be. Bucky would’ve known to stay away from the security cameras. Still, Steve was disappointed.

Steve prepared himself a cup of coffee and took it out to the back deck. He sat on the steps and looked out over the back yard, the woods, the lake beyond that. He waited for something he knew was never going to happen, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to stop. Seeing what he thought was his best friend, his best guy, made his heart ache anew with the pain of losing Bucky.

_Where are you, Buck?_ Steve thought, and then, _Sometimes I wish they’d never brought me out of the ice._

The years ahead loomed long and empty, and Steve didn’t know how he’d fill them. Everyone Steve had known, except for Peggy, was gone, and she sometimes forgot that it wasn’t still 1944. Steve hated seeing the once vibrant woman in such a fragile physical and mental state, and if he was honest, visits with Peggy selfishly reminded Steve of everything he’d missed out on over the past seventy years.

Fury had mentioned some kind of super-powered team, but Steve had just finished fighting a war and he didn’t know if he was ready to do it again, especially without Bucky by his side.

The moon was high in the sky when Steve heard Bucky’s voice again. _Steve. Steve Rogers. Stevie!_

_What?_ Steve thought back irritably before he was fully awake, and then he thought, _Buck? Where are you?_

_Run, Steve, they’re coming for you. Run!_

Steve didn’t hesitate; he threw on the clothes closest to the bed, shoved his feet into a pair of work shoes, and grabbed his jacket. He hit the panic button on the way to the four-wheeler hidden in the lean-to, and then he was gone, following the escape plan that Fury had laid out for him.

When he returned the next day with Fury and a SHIELD strike team, the cabin had been leveled. The security had apparently kept whoever had come for Steve from breaking in, so they’d blown the place up. Steve wondered if they’d known he wasn’t inside when they did so. If they’d cared either way.

“You know Banner stayed here once?” Fury said as he stared at what remained of his cabin.

“Yeah,” Steve said, because Fury had told him that when he’d offered up the cabin.

“Even the Hulk didn’t do this much damage,” Fury said in disgust. “How the hell did you know someone was coming for you?”

“Sixth sense,” Steve said.

Steve made a deal with Fury that day – he’d join SHIELD and Fury’s Avengers Initiative if Fury gave him access to all of SHIELD’s files. Steve said he wanted to know who he was working for (transparency was a word the internet had taught him), but what he really wanted was all of SHIELD’s files on James Buchanan Barnes and HYDRA.

Steve kept trying to communicate with Bucky, but no matter how many times Steve called out to him, Bucky never answered.

~*~*~*~

The Asset woke quickly, although he waited a while before he made the doctors who were assisting him with the adjustment from Cryostasis to Active Status aware of it. Eyes closed, breathing even, he read the room. No one spoke of anything aside from the Asset’s vitals, but there was a sense of anticipation in the tone of their voices, in their movements.

The Asset wondered how long he’d been down this time. Immediately on the heels of that thought came the memories. Images from his last mission filtered into his brain. Captain America. Steve Rogers. The cabin in the woods. The voice inside his head.

They’d let him rest for a few hours before he was returned to the briefing room. Each time the Asset closed his eyes he’d seen the face of the man at the cabin, the recognition in his eyes, in his voice, so he hadn’t gotten much sleep. Now that they knew their target was definitely in the cabin, they were going in to capture him. Half a dozen strike teams were geared up and ready to go, and the Asset wondered who this Captain America was that they thought they needed this much fire power to bring down one man.

_Sometimes I think you like getting punched._

The Asset was used to hiding his thoughts from his handlers so the blank mask he wore never shifted when this one crossed his mind. The man he imagined was smaller than the target, but the Asset thought he might be the same person. The Asset pushed the question of how that could be aside and tuned back in to the briefing. If they captured the target, would they turn him into an asset as well? The Asset would have someone to talk to, although there was no guarantee they’d be awake at the same time.

When it came time to move out, the Asset was loaded into the back of a transport along with one of the strike teams. His leg was chained. Even so, the men were afraid of him, each of them flinching when his gaze met theirs. It made them nervous, though, so the Asset closed his eyes. He’d heal from most gunshot wounds, but getting shot still hurt.

_I thought you were dead. I thought you were smaller._

The Asset hadn’t been actively searching for the memory, but it helped make sense of the previous one.

_I can get by on my own. The thing is, you don’t have to._

_Where are we going? The future._

_I’m with you ‘til the end of the line, pal._

The Asset’s mind whirled as jumbled memories hit him in quick succession. The Asset turned them over to see if he could draw any additional images from them, then stored the memories away in the part of his brain the chair couldn’t reach, where he’d hidden bits and pieces of himself over his various periods of wakefulness. The Asset still didn’t remember much from his earliest missions, and he didn’t remember everything from the more recent ones, but those bits and pieces he did remember, even if he had no context for them, were the only thing he had that was _his_. He was determined to keep them.

The Asset didn’t know if the others had memories, or if they were wiped clean every time they were put in the chair. They were rarely awake at the same time, and even if they were he’d be afraid to ask. If word somehow got back to his handler, even inadvertently, that the Asset was no longer a clean slate after every wipe they might try something drastic to remove his memories, possibly leave him in cryo or dispose of him if they were unsuccessful.

The Asset couldn’t stop thinking about the man, this Captain America or Steve Rogers. The way he’d looked at the Asset with recognition, the fact that he’d heard the Asset’s thoughts without the Asset even trying to communicate with him. The memories he’d had since. This man was part of the Asset’s past. It made sense to keep him alive until the Asset could learn more from him. It wasn’t sentiment, it was logic.

They’d been on the road for just under two hours by the time they stopped and unloaded. There were other teams moving to surround the cabin so there wasn’t much time. The Asset swiftly complied with the command to shift. As soon as he began the transformation, the Asset reached out with his mind. _Steve._ When there was no response, he tried again, _Steve Rogers._ The Asset found himself becoming agitated, and he yelled silently, _Stevie!_

_What?_ an irritable voice said inside the Asset’s head, and then with recognition, _Buck? Where are you?_

_Run, Steve_ , the Asset implored, _they’re coming for you. Run!_

The Asset felt shock and determination, then there was nothing. He almost couldn’t believe that the man, Steve, had heard him, that he’d trusted him so blindly, but when they reached the cabin infrared scans showed that it was empty.

It would’ve been smarter to leave as if they’d never been there, but someone up the chain of command was angry that they’d missed their opportunity, so he ordered that the cabin be destroyed. The Asset found himself hoping that the man, Steve, wasn’t hidden inside the cabin, in some space that was impervious to the infrared.

The Asset’s handler pulled him aside when he was in human form once more. “You’re sure he was here?”

“Yes,” the Asset said.

“Then something spooked him,” the handler said irritably. “Did he see you?”

“No,” the Asset said, and there was no lie in his tone, in his expression. The man, Steve Rogers, hadn’t seen the Asset. He’d seen someone called Bucky.

“Is he ready?” a voice said, and the Asset was drawn out of his memories of being put back into cryo after the failed mission.

In the briefing room, the Asset’s handler said, “Do you recognize this man?”

The Asset studied the photo on the board. “Yes.” Despite the man, Steve Rogers, having eluded capture, they hadn’t wiped him before returning him to cryo. “From the last mission.”

“Anything else?”

The Asset turned his unnerving gaze onto his handler and tilted his head. “There isn’t anything else.”

His handler studied the Asset as if he could find the lie in his words, and then he began the briefing. “Steve Rogers is going to be harder to capture this time. He works for SHIELD now and he’s surrounded himself with a group called The Avengers.”

“What’s so important about this man?” the Asset said, courting reprimand, or even punishment for speaking out of turn.

“He’d be a tremendous asset,” his handler said.

“If we could turn him,” someone said.

“We did it before,” said another voice, and someone chuckled.

“Is he like me?” the Asset said.

“No,” his handler said. “But we could use his blood to create more of you.” He returned to the briefing. “The Captain has been doing a lot of research into HYDRA experiments around the time his buddy Bucky was captured during the war. Do you happen to know why he’d be doing that?” his handler asked the Asset.

The words _his buddy Bucky_ ran through the Asset’s mind. “Who’s Bucky?” he said instead of addressing the direct question.

His handler studied him, while behind the Asset some of the soldiers from the strike team shifted in their seats and murmured. No one laughed this time, but the Asset was starting to understand why they had done so in the past. When he’d asked who the man in the photo was, and now when he asked who Bucky was. If Steve Rogers and the Asset had once known each other, if the man hadn’t been mistaken and the Asset had in fact been this Bucky person . . .

His handler ignored the question and continued. “We slipped in some information about a decommissioned base in Romania that he won’t be able to resist checking out. It won’t be empty when he gets there.”

The Asset didn’t know if he could communicate with his mind when he was in his human form, or only when he was in his wolf form, and if he could, he didn’t know if the distance between them was too great, but he had to make the attempt. The Asset reached out. _Steve?_

The Asset was not surprised, nor was he disappointed, when there was no response. He set himself the task to try again later.

While they waited for the moment to leave, the Asset was recertified on a variety of weapons and in hand-to-hand fighting techniques. He didn’t know why they bothered, since he was rarely sent into the field in his human form, but it gave the Asset something to do aside from attempt to reach out to Steve Rogers.

They flew in a transport, and then parachuted into the area where the base was located. As soon as they landed, the Asset was commanded to shift so he could patrol the area. The Asset was used to the cold and the snow, so it didn’t bother him, but he was especially unbothered by it once he shifted.

As soon as he was out of sight of the others who were setting up camp under winter camouflage, the Asset tried to reach Steve Rogers again. He almost tripped over his own paws when this attempt garnered him a response.

_Steve?_ the Asset thought again, as if he’d ever communicated with anyone else in this manner.

_Yeah, it’s me, Buck_ , the voice inside his head said.

_It’s a trap!_

_I know_ , the man said.

_So you’re staying away, right?_ the Asset thought.

_I’ll see you soon, Buck_ , Steve said.

_What? No!_ That wasn’t logical. _Steve?_ There was no answer. The Asset felt a sense of exasperation that seemed familiar. _God damn it, Steve!_ Far away, the Asset heard someone chuckle.

~*~*~*~

“I need to go to Romania,” Steve told Fury.

“For what?” Fury said without looking up from the file he was reading.

“To follow up on a lead,” Steve said, reluctant to give up even that much information. He could fly there on one of the airlines, but borrowing a Quinjet would be faster and keep his visit from becoming public knowledge.

“On Barnes and HYDRA?” Fury said. He glanced up then and caught the expression of surprise that Steve couldn’t hide quickly enough.

“I should’ve known you’d spy on me,” Steve said with bitter resignation.

“I gave you free and unfettered access to every SHIELD file that ever existed.” Fury leaned back in his chair. “You’re damned right I’m going to keep track of what you look at.”

“Fine, yes,” Steve said. “It’s a lead on a decommissioned HYDRA base in Romania.”

“What do you think you’re going to find there?”

“I don’t know,” Steve said. “Maybe nothing, but I have to check it out.”

“What’s the connection between Barnes and HYDRA?” Fury said.

“Bucky was captured by HYDRA during the war,” Steve said.

“I know,” Fury said. “It’s in his file, and all the war movies, but he was held in Austria, not Romania, so if that’s all it is, then what are you looking for now?”

Steve considered whether he should say anything to Fury, and realized that if he shared some information with him it might grease the wheels of getting Fury’s approval for the Quinjet. “Bucky was experimented on.”

Fury sat up straight. “ _That_ is not in his file.”

“No, sir.”

“Who knew?”

“Me and Bucky. The Commandos.”

“Carter?”

Steve shook his head.

“Phillips?”

“No. We didn’t tell anyone up the chain of command who might use it against him,” Steve said.

“Why are you telling me this now?” Fury said.

“Would you give me the Quinjet if I didn’t give you something in return?” Steve said.

Instead of replying to that, Fury said, “What’s the point of looking into this now?” Something on Steve’s face must’ve given it away, because Fury said, “Well, shit. You think Barnes might’ve survived the fall from the train.”

“I’m here,” Steve said, without mentioning the wolf.

Fury gave Steve a sad look, like he thought Steve was going to be disappointed by whatever he found. “I’ll give you the Quinjet on one condition.” When Steve didn’t argue, Fury said, “You take a team with you for back up.”

“I was hoping you’d say that, sir.”

Fury studied Steve. “You think it’s a trap.”

“You know what they say about something being too good to be true,” Steve said. The information had fallen too neatly into his lap, but though Steve was suspicious of it he couldn’t ignore it. “Besides, wouldn’t be the first time since my return that someone’s tried to capture me.”

“Well, son of a bitch,” Fury said. “In that case, take two teams.”

“One should be sufficient, sir,” Steve said.

“They blew up my damned cabin,” Fury said. “Take two.”

~*~

They’d reached Romanian airspace before Steve heard from Bucky again. The sound of his name in his mind after so much time had passed was such a relief that it took Steve a moment to answer. _Hey, Buck_ , Steve thought back, trying to keep the smile off his face.

_Steve?_ Bucky said, sounding surprised to hear from him, which made Steve wonder how long he’d been trying.

_Yeah, it’s me, Buck_ , Steve thought.

_It’s a trap_ , Bucky said.

_I know_ , Steve thought.

There was a moment of silence before Bucky spoke again. _So you’re staying away, right?_

_I’ll see you soon, Buck._

_What? No!_ Bucky said. _Steve?_

Steve didn’t answer because he didn’t want to go into a long explanation or start a fight with Bucky when they were nearly there.

_God damn it, Steve!_

The irritation in Bucky’s tone reminded Steve of how many times he’d gotten into trouble back in Brooklyn, times when Bucky had waded in to save his ass. He chuckled at the memory.

“Something funny, Cap?” Clint said from the pilot seat.

Steve shook his head. “Just thinking about Bucky.”

“Good thoughts?” Natasha said.

“Yeah,” Steve said softly.

~*~

Clint dropped off Steve and the strike team; he and Natasha remained in the cloaked Quinjet. Steve’s plan was simple – he and strike team Alpha were going to draw whoever was waiting for them away from the base while Clint and Natasha snuck into the base with strike team Omega as back up.

_Okay, Buck_ , Steve thought, _I’m here. Bring them to me._

_What?_ Bucky said inside Steve’s mind, his disbelief at the request coming across loud and clear.

_I’ve got a plan._

~*~

_Was this part of the plan?_ Bucky thought sarcastically, as Steve carried him through the snowstorm to a hut he’d seen earlier when Clint was looking for a place to land the Quinjet.

“Yes, and no,” Steve panted.

Bucky made a low grunt of pain when Steve shifted the wounded wolf in his arms so he could open the door. “Sorry, sorry,” Steve said. He strode across the small hut and laid Bucky down on a cot that creaked under the weight.

Steve hurried back to close the door, and then looked around the hut to see what supplies they had. Luckily the hut had been stocked with a pile of wood that would keep them warm until the snow ended and Clint could pick them up.

~*~*~*~

The Asset studied Steve from his place on the cot as Steve surveyed the hut, then moved towards the fireplace. “I need to start a fire,” Steve said. He knelt in front of the fireplace and reached for the shovel to clean out the ashes left over from a previous fire.

_You should set my leg first._ They’d require heat if the snowstorm kept them trapped in the hut for any length of time, but his injury was the more immediate need. _You need to set it now before it heals wrong and we need to re-break it._

Steve froze in mid-reach, then sat back on his heels. He stood and turned to face the Asset as he slowly reached up to push his fingers through his hair. 

The Asset recognized it as a delaying tactic. _Have you done it before?_

“Once,” Steve said. “You’d . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t like hurting you.”

_Gonna hurt worse if you don’t do it now, pal_ , the Asset thought.

An expression that could only be described as hope crossed Steve’s face (which made the Asset wonder what he’d said to evoke that emotion), and then he looked determined. “First thing we need to do is get the muzzle off of you.”

_No!_ At Steve’s look of surprise, the Asset explained, _I might bite you._

Steve scoffed. “You won’t bite me.” He sounded so sure of it that the Asset almost believed it.

_I might not mean to_ , the Asset allowed.

“You need something to bite down on when I do your leg,” Steve said as if he had no qualms about freeing the Asset’s jaw, thus giving him another weapon that might be used against him.

Steve looked around the hut again, this time with purpose. He strode back over to the wood pile and sorted through it, returning with a chunk of wood that the Asset could close his jaws around. The Asset made a sound of approval, which made Steve smile.

Steve knelt beside the cot and reached for the Asset’s head. The Asset automatically recoiled, then froze when he realized what he’d done. Steve froze in return. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have moved so fast. I know you probably don’t remember me.” When the Asset didn’t respond, Steve looked sad, but it was only a moment before the determination expression returned. “I’m just going to remove the muzzle.”

_I know_ , the Asset thought back. He held as still as he could while Steve ran gentle fingers over his head, the straps of the muzzle, until he found the release.

Steve dropped the muzzle as if it offended him and almost absently ran his other hand down the Asset’s neck to his back. He shook himself, then held the piece of wood so the Asset could bite down on it.

The Asset took the piece of wood from Steve’s hands as gently as he could, then watched as Steve psyched himself up to set the leg. The Asset didn’t close his eyes when Steve gripped his leg above and below the break; he’d learned that the things behind his eyes were sometimes worse. The Asset didn’t scream at the pain – it was the one rebellion he had – but he did bite through the chunk of wood and ended up bloodying his own tongue anyway.

Steve had broken out into a sweat and he looked like he wanted to vomit.

_I’m fine_ , the Asset assured Steve as he spit out slivers of wood. _You should start the fire now._

Steve moved as if all he’d needed was to be given a purpose. While Steve built the fire, the Asset watched him, and wished he could remember why this man felt so familiar to him. Why they could touch minds.

_What part of the plan went right?_

“What?” Steve said without turning his head.

_When I asked if this was part of the plan, which was sarcasm, by the way, you said . . ._

“Oh, yeah,” Steve said. “You were the plan, I just didn’t expect you to get hurt.”

_What do you mean?_

“Getting you away from them,” Steve said as he moved away from the fireplace.

_You came because of the base_ , the Asset thought, seeking clarification.

“No,” Steve said. “I knew that was a trap. They’d already tried to capture me once. I just hoped they’d send you again.”

The Asset’s mind whirled as he tried to make sense of what Steve had just told him. _You . . . came to rescue me?_

Steve grinned. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

_Why?_ The Asset almost regretted the question when he saw the sadness in Steve’s eyes.

“Because you’re my friend.” Steve knelt beside the cot and stared at the star that had been branded into the Asset’s hide. He reached out to touch it, as if it might still hurt. “I wish I’d gotten there sooner.”

The Asset shifted uneasily on the cot. It wasn’t nerves, exactly. He didn’t know what it was.

“Don’t move,” Steve said, drawing his hand back. “And don’t try to shift back, you heal better in this form.”

The Asset knew that, but it made him feel . . . something . . . that Steve also knew it about him when the Asset had so few memories of Steve. And the ones he did have didn’t make much sense. _I don’t remember you._

Steve ducked his head, but the Asset saw the sorrow Steve tried to hide. “I know.” He shook his body like a dog (an image which would’ve made the Asset smile if he spent much time smiling) and then turned a determined face to the Asset. “Is it . . . amnesia?”

_What’s amnesia?_

Steve looked stymied for a moment, but then he explained to the Asset what amnesia was. The Asset thought on it. He supposed you could call what he had amnesia in a very loose sense. He was almost tempted to tell Steve that yes, he had amnesia, to save him from the truth. The Asset became agitated when he couldn’t understand why he’d want to save Steve from the truth.

_There’s a chair_ , the Asset blurted. _They wipe me._

“Wipe?”

_My mind. They like a clean slate._

Steve looked horrified. “Does it hurt?”

_I don’t remember_ , the Asset lied, and then change the subject. He had a lot of questions about the ability to speak mind-to-mind that he’d been unable to ask his brethren, but since he and Steve could communicate that way it was possible that Steve had some answers. _Can we communicate like this when I’m in my human form?_

Steve blushed, which the Asset thought was a strange reaction to the simple question, and then he looked unhappy. “We have before, but usually only when strong emotions are involved.”

_Like what?_

Steve hesitated, and then plunged ahead. “When you fell. From the train. I heard your screams in my head until the day I put the plane in the ocean.”

The Asset tilted his head. _What do you mean?_

Steve studied the Asset, and even though he’d been studied by people who were much more cruel than Steve, he wanted to lower his eyes. He made himself speak. _Tell me._

Steve told the Asset about his friend Bucky’s fall from the train, his vow to end HYDRA, discovering the bombs and crashing the plane, and being found seventy years later. The Asset found some black humor in the notion that they’d both survived to this point because they’d both been put on ice. He found he didn’t want to think about that. _Tell me something else. From before._

Steve’s lips curled up into a small smile that completely changed his face. “There was this roller coaster at Coney Island called the Cyclone . . .”

~*~*~*~

When Steve woke the next morning the hut was silent. The storm had passed, and with it the sound of the wind rattling the door and windows and the snow pelting the glass. The fire had gone out and a blanket had been drawn over him. Steve turned his head towards the cot, which was now empty, the mattress bare. “Bucky?” Steve said as he sat up, throwing off the blanket.

Steve stood and looked around the hut as if Bucky might appear at any moment. _Bucky!_ Steve thought, anguished. A moment later Steve heard Bucky’s voice in his head, speaking his name.

_Where are you?_

_They’ll never stop coming for you_ , Bucky said. _Especially if you steal one of their assets._

_Bucky, no._

_Besides, I’ll be more help to you from inside._

“What?” Steve said, then thought it. _Bucky, what are you going to do?_

_What I always do_ , Bucky said. _Keep you alive._

Steve called out to Bucky again and again, but there was no answer. He considered going after Bucky, but even close enough to communicate telepathically, Bucky already had too great a head start, especially with his enhanced speed further enhanced by being in wolf form.

With wooden motions, Steve refolded the blanket and set it on the cot. He picked up the earbud he’d removed after contacting Natasha to let her know he’d found shelter until the snowstorm let up. Resigned, Steve placed the earbud in his ear. Immediately he heard Clint’s voice trying to raise him.

“I’m here,” Steve said. “Sorry, I took the earbud out so I could sleep.”

Steve agreed to meet up with them, and the strike team he’d gotten separated from during the storm, in the same clearing that they’d been dropped off in. He’d buckled himself in before Natasha spoke.

“You haven’t asked us what we found inside the base.”

“Did you find something?” Steve said, trying to feign interest.

“No, it was empty.”

Steve nodded. “We suspected it was a trap.”

“Then why do you sound so disappointed?”

Steve swallowed hard. “I still . . . hoped.”

Natasha nodded as if she understood, but she couldn’t. “The good news is we got some prisoners to question.”

“They’re foot soldiers, they probably don’t know much.”

“They’ve already told us one thing,” Natasha said. When Steve gave her an expectant look, she said, “They’re HYDRA.”

Steve fisted his hand and wished there was something he could punch. He’d wondered, suspected, but hoped he’d been wrong in his fears that Bucky had fallen once more into HYDRA’s hands. That he’d been their weapon for the past seventy years, and that he was within their control once again.

“And they’ll know the location of at least one HYDRA base.”

Steve perked up at that. If there was anything Steve knew how to do, it was storm HYDRA bases. Especially when he knew that Bucky was being held inside one of them.

“What’s that?” Natasha said, gesturing towards Steve’s hand.

Steve turned over the muzzle he’d found when he was setting the hut to rights. He didn’t know why he’d kept it; as connections to Bucky went, it wasn’t much. He showed it to her.

“There was a wolf with them?” Natasha said, her voice too even.

“Yes.” Steve studied Natasha’s face, but she didn’t say anything else.

~*~

The soldiers didn’t talk – turns out they were more afraid of HYDRA than of SHIELD – but when Steve walked through the scanners at SHIELD HQ he was stopped by loud alarms. The muzzle held a microchip, and once the tech geniuses at SHIELD disabled the GPS tracker so that HYDRA couldn’t find their location they set about seeing if they could trace the signal back to the source.

“Do you want to tell me why you brought back that muzzle?” Fury said.

Steve wasn’t surprised that Natasha was also present in Fury’s office when he was called in, but she stood near the back and only nodded at Steve when he entered. Steve made a snap decision to trust both Fury and Natasha with the information. “I told you that I thought Bucky might still be alive,” Steve said slowly. “I lied.”

“Captain America lied?” Natasha drawled.

“I _knew_ that Bucky was alive,” Steve said, ignoring Natasha’s comment.

“Explain.” Fury’s expression was, well, furious, but Steve had seen him in far worse moods (like when his cabin had been blown up), so he went on.

“I knew because I’d seen him.”

“Seen him?” Fury said. “When did you see him?”

“At the cabin,” Steve said.

“You didn’t mention running into your old buddy Bucky at the cabin,” Fury said.

“I did, actually,” Steve said. He swallowed hard before continuing, “The wolf.”

Natasha made a sound behind Steve, but he didn’t take his eyes off Fury.

“The wolf,” Fury said in disbelief.

“There was a reason we didn’t tell anyone that Bucky’d been experimented on by HYDRA,” Steve said.

“Because he can turn into a wolf,” Fury said. When Steve didn’t contradict him, Fury said, “You seriously expect me to believe this.”

“I’ve seen the wolf,” Natasha said. “It was years ago. They keep it muzzled.”

Fury spared Natasha a look that said he was not happy with either of them, because he did not want to deal with this shit.

“So you brought back the muzzle out of, what, sentimentality?” Fury demanded.

“Something like that,” Steve said.

Fury leaned forward and rested his arms on his desk, studied Steve over them. “Did you know that Bucky was going to be there?”

“I hoped,” Steve said.

“What was the plan?” Fury said. “The real plan that you didn’t tell us about.”

“Rescuing Bucky.”

“Rescuing Bucky,” Fury repeated. “You do realize that if your friend has been working for HYDRA for all these years, he’s not the same person he was when you knew him.”

Steve shook his head. “Bucky would not _choose_ to work for HYDRA,” he said adamantly. “They’ve done something to him. He . . . he doesn’t recognize me, not really, but . . .”

“But what?” Natasha said gently.

“Some part of him does,” Steve said.

“Tell me what happened out there,” Fury said.

Steve told him everything.

“Do you really think we can trust him?” Fury said.

“I’d trust him with my life,” Steve said.

“Even now?” Natasha said.

“Always.”

The door was pushed open without a knock, and Maria Hill poked her head inside. “We’ve got something,” she said excitedly.

Without waiting for Fury to give the word, Steve raced from the room. Natasha was hot on his heels, and Hill and Fury followed more sedately, but Steve could tell that Fury was just as pleased to have gotten something from the chip.

“We traced the signal back as far as we could. We were only able to get a general location, so we pulled up satellite images.” The woman looked pleased, even excited, but Steve saw nothing.

“There’s nothing there,” Steve said.

“There is,” the woman said, nearly grinning. “It’s below ground.”

“What do we have near . . .”

“Austria,” Hill supplied.

“. . . Austria?” Fury continued. “I want a drone out there getting thermal and ground penetrating imaging. And then we need to get a team together . . .”

“I’m going,” Steve said.

Fury gave Steve a look, but he didn’t argue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Russian Translations:
> 
> Preobrazovyvat – Transform
> 
> Idti – Go
> 
> 2\. The base in Austria is the one that Peggy Carter and the SSR raided in 1945 where they discovered Werner Reinhardt and the Obelisk. (Agents of SHIELD 2.01)


	2. Chapter 2

The Asset sat in a chair (not _the_ chair) and listened to the discussion around him. They were upset that they’d lost Steve Rogers again. The soldiers they’d lost, dead or captured, were of lesser concern. The Asset had been debriefed and fed (even though he’d been out of cryo for several days now he was still only given a protein shake so that it wouldn’t upset his stomach), and was sitting in on this meeting for reasons he couldn’t understand; normally he was returned to cryo as soon as the mission was over, whether successfully accomplished or not.

The Asset had remained silent throughout the post-mission debrief in case they realized he shouldn’t be there. Now that he’d had Steve’s voice in his head, now that he’d met him, the Asset didn’t want to lose any time to cryo. Also, he couldn’t help Steve if he was in cryo.

The Asset clenched his jaw, then forced it to relax. There was an imperative, aside from the need to find out more about their telepathic link, to keep Steve Rogers safe that the Asset didn’t fully understand. It was as if his code had been overwritten. His purpose was no longer to serve Hydra, but to keep Steve safe.

The Asset heard footsteps running down the hallway. The door opened and everyone else turned in surprise. The Asset kept his head down.

“We just shot down a drone,” the man said, breathless.

“Where the hell did it come from?” someone demanded.

“SHIELD,” the Asset heard himself say.

Suddenly all eyes were on him, as if they’d forgotten he _could_ speak.

The Asset didn’t berate himself for letting the word slip out. Instead, he continued the line of thought. “It was a trap,” he said.

“We know,” someone said derisively, the Asset didn’t bother to look and see who, just kept his eyes facing forward, “we set it.”

The Asset shook his head. “They expected us. The target didn’t go anywhere near the base. He drew us out and made us separate our forces.”

A heavy silence followed that proclamation, and the Asset wondered if he should’ve kept his mouth shut. Now, Steve would come and they would be waiting for him. And they’d probably put the Asset back into cryo for his impertinence and he wouldn’t be there to help Steve like he’d so foolishly promised.

“If he didn’t want to check out that base, what did he want?” someone said.

“I think the fact that a drone was doing a fly-over of this base answers that question – we’ve been compromised. Protocol Inferno.” A moment after that pronouncement was made red lights started flashing and alarms bleated annoyingly.

The Asset had only been awake for one other Protocol Inferno, but he recalled the orderly chaos as scientists and soldiers both worked feverishly to save what they could so it wouldn’t be left behind and destroyed.

“Twenty minutes!” a voice thundered. “What are you all waiting for?”

Everyone except for the Asset hurried from the room; he had no assignment, and there wasn’t enough time to return him to cryo.

“Nikolaev, take the Asset with you and make sure the self-destruct is set to go off as soon as we leave; we’re not going to leave anything behind that they can use. And make sure to leave an extra special present for SHIELD.”

“Yes, sir,” Nikolaev said.

The self-destruct would take out all of the equipment so that SHIELD wouldn’t be able to get any information off the hard drives, but any ‘extra special present’ would put Steve in danger. “The target might be killed,” the Asset said.

Hard eyes turned on him. “Why do you care?”

“You said his blood was important.”

The Asset didn’t flinch under the scrutiny he was subjected to and finally the man spoke again. “Not as important as making sure SHIELD doesn’t get their hands on our research here.”

The man gave a dismissive nod to Nikolaev, who gruffly said, “Come.”

The Asset disagreed with the man’s assessment, but he didn’t let that show on his face as he obediently turned and followed Nikolaev. His mind whirled as he thought about Steve being caught in the explosion when he entered the base, and outside the briefing room the base was in a similar chaos with people bustling here and there. Nikolaev led the way to the armory and they passed labs where scientists were frantically downloading information and packing up as much of the equipment as they could to be transferred to the transports, which were being fueled and made ready.

Inside the armory soldiers were also packing weapons into cases. Nikolaev ignored them as he began to select C4 and blasting caps, everything they needed to create an explosion. “Timer,” the Asset suggested, keeping the desperation out of his voice. When Nikolaev ignored him, the Asset said, “It would be more effective if the explosion didn’t go off until more SHIELD agents were inside.”

“That’s not what we were told to do,” Nikolaev said.

The Asset merely nodded in acknowledgment of Nikolaev’s statement, as if it made no difference to him. Nikolaev made a disgruntled sound and tossed a timer into the basket. They took over a table and began assembling the explosives.

“Three minutes?” the Asset said, wondering if he’d given himself away with the amount of leeway he was affording Steve when Nikolaev didn’t reply at first.

“Make it five. If we give them time to get further inside they’ll be less likely to escape when they realize what’s happening,” Nikolaev said, taking to the idea as if it had been his own.

The Asset nodded and set the timer. His fingers never hesitated as he put down the bomb and began to assemble another. Once they had enough bombs made, Nikolaev gave the Asset the task of setting them in place while he made sure the self-destruct was properly set.

The Asset placed the bombs on load bearing columns, high enough that they wouldn’t be spotted at first glance, working his way to the entrance through which SHIELD would most likely gain access. He checked his internal clock as he went through the motions of connecting the bombs to the door’s wiring so that opening it would (theoretically) start the timer counting down.

The closer the time grew to the twenty minute deadline, the fewer people remained in the corridors. The Asset waited until there was less than two minutes left and dropped the wiring he’d been pretending to attach. His hands shook as he stepped away from the door mechanism without completing the task he was given. The Asset turned away and strode back down the corridor the way he’d come, reaching up to pull the detonator out of each block of C4 as he passed the bombs he’d planted.

The Asset stepped into the security room. Nikolaev was still there; the Asset had been hoping he’d already finished and boarded the transports.

“What are you doing here?” Nikolaev asked without looking up from his task.

“You’re my handler,” the Asset said.

Nikolaev snorted as his fingers danced across the keys. The Asset checked his internal clock; less than one minute now before the transports left. He couldn’t wait any longer. The Asset reached out and twisted Nikolaev’s head, breaking his neck. Nikolaev only had a moment to look surprised before the life faded from his eyes. The Asset dropped the body to the floor and looked at the computers. If the information was important, then he wanted Steve to find it, but he had no idea how to stop the self-destruct Nikolaev had initiated.

The Asset did know how to kill things, though. He found the power source and pulled all the plugs. It was rather anti-climactic and as he stared at the wires in his hands he wondered if it had been enough. It had to be, he thought as his internal clock continued to count down. The Asset dropped the cords and ran towards the hangar bay.

On the way the Asset passed the lab where he’d been woken from cryo just days ago. His feet slowed, but there was no time to make sure that those pieces of equipment were destroyed, and so he kept going. The Asset didn’t know why the thought of Steve finding that lab bothered him.

The Asset was checked off like any other piece of equipment when he stepped into the hangar bay, and then was directed to one of the planes.

“Where’s Nikolaev?” the man who’d assigned the Asset to Nikolaev said.

“He was right behind me,” the Asset said with no inflection. He looked over his shoulder as if he expected Nikolaev to appear at any moment, even though he knew the soldier never would.

The man looked annoyed, and for a moment the Asset thought he might send someone to look for Nikolaev. Someone said, “Sir, we have to leave,” and the man said, “Everyone on board.” As soon as they all were, he said, “Close the ramps. Let’s get out of here.”

The Asset did not sigh with relief. He found a spot on the floor and sat with his back against one of the cases and wondered if Steve would actually be among those coming, wondered if Steve was still mad at the Asset for leaving him in the cabin in Romania. Or if he understood.

The people that the Asset worked for wanted Steve for reasons that the Asset couldn’t quite place yet, wanted his blood, at least, and so long as Steve was alive (and if the Asset had anything to say about it, Steve would be alive for a very long time), they would never stop looking. Steve needed the Asset to keep him safe until there was no longer a threat.

The Asset didn’t know why that felt familiar, but there was a warmth around his heart even though his mind was silent.

~*~*~*~

Steve had been still as stone during the flight, so much so that he’d garnered worried glances from Natasha, but now he couldn’t stop his knee from bouncing as they were forced to wait while SHIELD forces cleared the base. They’d arrived at the base in the Austrian Alps (Steve couldn’t believe he was back in Austria again, hunting HYDRA), expecting resistance; Steve had worried over how he’d protect Bucky in such a situation. Now, all that adrenaline had nowhere to go and Steve was itching to get inside the base and see for himself that it had been abandoned.

The entry team had found the base deserted, but the moment they found explosives Hill had ordered the base cleared except for their explosives experts before anyone else was allowed inside. When they finally received the go-ahead, Steve was the first one up and moving. As he neared the base, Steve’s footsteps slowed; he wanted to take in every detail of the place that had been Bucky’s home, his prison.

Inside the doors that SHIELD had needed to force open there was a mess of wires pulled out of an open panel beside them. There was a timing device, but the wires hadn’t been connected to it. Steve’s eyes followed the wire leading from the timer to the first explosive. The explosives team had mentioned that the bombs hadn’t detonated because the blasting caps hadn’t been inserted into the C4, which was pretty sloppy bomb-making.

Steve walked the corridor, cognizant of Clint and Natasha following him. He studied each of the bombs, and looked closely at the detonators. There were traces of C4 on the blasting caps, which meant that someone had taken the time to pull them from the C4. Steve indicated that Clint and Natasha should take a closer look at one of the detonators.

“What do you make of it?” Natasha said as if she already knew what Steve’s answer would be.

Steve gave her a look. “I’d say someone didn’t want those bombs to go off.”

“Someone?” Clint said.

Steve hesitated, then said, “It’s a long story that I don’t want to go into here.” There were too many ears. “But I know someone on the inside.”

“You know . . . ,” Clint started, but he snapped his mouth closed when a group of SHIELD techs moved past them with equipment.

“Captain,” Hill said from behind Steve.

Steve turned and the look on her face made his blood run cold.

“There’s a body.”

Steve’s heart stopped. “Is it . . . ?”

“Pretty sure it’s not. Would you . . . ?”

The last thing Steve wanted to do was identify Bucky’s body after having just found him again, but his feet were moving before he registered making the decision. Steve followed Hill to what looked like a computer lab, Natasha and Clint trailing behind them. Steve moved over to the body and knelt beside it. He hesitated a moment before touching the shoulder and moving the body so he could see the face.

The wave of relief Steve felt when he didn’t recognize the man was so strong that tears stung the back of his eyes. “I don’t know this man,” Steve said. He stood up and stepped back out of the bustle of activity as the computers were torn apart, the hard drives removed so they could be studied back at SHIELD HQ.

Steve had to clear his throat before speaking again. “Do we know why this man was killed and left behind?”

“We have an idea,” Hill said. She pointed, and Steve’s gaze followed the direction of her gesture. “Someone unplugged the computers. We believe that this man might have been setting a self-destruct which would’ve wiped all of the information on these computers. Whoever unplugged the computers provided us with a lot of intel.”

“Whoever,” Steve repeated.

“Whoever,” Hill agreed. With a jerk of her head, Hill gestured for Steve to follow her outside of the computer lab. “There’s something else.”

Hill must’ve seen what those words did to Steve, because she laid her hand on his arm. “Not that. I’d rather not show this to you, but . . .”

“Show me,” Steve said, squaring his shoulders. If it had to do with Bucky, Steve needed to know. Whatever Steve had been expecting, it hadn’t been a lab containing a cryogenic chamber, a chair that looked like some kind of torture device, and metal table with straps. “Oh my god.”

Steve’s mind flashed to the image of Bucky lying on the table in the HYDRA base in Austria before Steve had rescued him. He closed his eyes as if he could block it, but that only made it more clear. Steve opened his eyes to see Hill watching him carefully.

“There are records here,” Hill said softly, gently.

“I want to see them,” Steve said. He left Hill and Natasha and Clint and walked over to the chair where they wiped Bucky’s mind. His hands tightened into fists as he fought the urge to smash it to bits. Lastly, he turned to the cylinder. Steve reached out and pressed his hand to the glass and imagined Bucky’s face behind it.

Steve shook his head to dispel the image and when he looked again he noticed Cyrillic writing on the chamber. “Natasha,” he said, “Is this Russian?”

Natasha came over and bent to take a look at the writing Steve pointed out to her. “Yes,” she said as she stood. She gave Steve a look.

“What is it?” Steve said.

“There are rumors,” Natasha said. “Of a soldier who is strong, fast. Who can appear as a wolf and tear out your throat. Most people think he’s a myth, a ghost. They call him the Winter Soldier.”

“The Winter Soldier,” Steve repeated. He and Natasha both knew that he was no ghost.

Hill ushered them out of the room so the scientists they’d brought in could disconnect the equipment to be removed and shipped back to SHIELD for study. With a heavy heart, Steve walked through the entire base and tried to imagine Bucky’s life there. Natasha and Clint stayed close, but they still managed to give Steve the space he needed to process what he’d seen.

Finally Steve couldn’t take being in the underground base any longer. He motioned to Natasha and Clint and began the walk back to the doors. Outside, Steve took deep breaths, and then he turned to Clint.

“I don’t know if you know the stories . . .” To Steve’s chagrin, he’d discovered that there had been a _lot_ of stories about him over the past seventy years. “. . . but I had a friend . . .”

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes,” Clint said immediately, like a child answering a question in school. Natasha gave him a look and Clint said, “I know a guy, alright?”

Natasha smiled at Clint, but Steve ignored their by-play. “Yes,” he said. The corners of his lips curled up at the sound of Bucky’s full name. “Bucky. He was captured by HYDRA during the war. They . . . experimented on him. And then he fell from the train and I thought he was dead, but . . .”

“But what?” Clint said.

“I’ve seen him.” Steve said. He couldn’t hide the happiness the thought brought him when he said, “Bucky’s alive.”

Clint’s expression of disbelief and concern actually made Steve laugh.

“Trust me, I felt the same way the first time I saw him.”

“Cap,” Clint said cautiously. “You really think Bucky survived a fall that far?”

“I didn’t at the time,” Steve said, “but I also wouldn’t have believed that I’d survive seventy years frozen in ice.”

Clint dipped his chin. “Fair point. So why are you . . . wait, are you telling me that Bucky Barnes is HYDRA?”

“Bucky is not HYDRA,” Steve growled through gritted teeth.

Clint’s eyes went wide at the ferocity of Steve’s response and Natasha said, “Down, tiger.”

Steve turned his glare onto Natasha, and then the moment passed. “Bucky is not HYDRA,” Steve said more calmly. “They put him in that . . . thing, and they wipe his mind . . .” Steve remembered how horrified he’d been when Bucky had told him why he didn’t remember too much of his past, didn’t remember Steve. Bucky had told Steve that he didn’t remember the wipes, but Bucky had never been able to lie to Steve.

“Wow, that sucks,” Clint said, which startled an unhappy huff of laughter out of Steve.

“Yeah.”

“So,” Clint said. “You’ve really seen him?”

Steve smiled at the memory. “Yeah. At the cabin in Minnesota, and then in Romania.”

“Wait,” Clint said. “Romania?”

Steve gave Clint a sheepish look.

“So Romania wasn’t ever about the base,” Clint said.

Steve shook his head. “It was a rescue attempt.”

“What happened?”

“Bucky . . . he said they’d never stop looking for me, especially if I took him. He . . . went back in. He thought he could be more help to me from inside HYDRA.”

“Shit. That takes balls. Even if it is stupid as fuck.”

“He wasn’t wrong,” Natasha said. “We just gathered more intel on HYDRA on one mission, with zero casualties, than we have in the past decade.”

“You think Bucky disabled those bombs and the self-destruct,” Clint said to Steve.

“Who else would’ve done it?” Steve said. His mind went back, his voice soft. “Even when we were kids, Bucky was always protecting me.”

~*~*~*~

The abandoned base was monitored, and when no explosion registered there was a lot of swearing and raised voices that went hushed so the scientists and soldiers on the transport didn’t overhear. The Asset kept his head down and his eyes closed, but even in human form his hearing was enhanced and he listened to the voices debating what had gone wrong. He heard Nikolaev’s name, and his own, and the Asset knew he’d be questioned about what had happened.

The Asset was helping to unload crates from the transports at the new base when he was ordered to stop what he was doing and report to his handler. The tension was high in the room the Asset was lead to. He took an even breath and kept his features blank.

“Tell us what you and Agent Nikolaev did after you left the conference room.” The man who spoke was someone the Asset had never seen before, but he spoke with such assurance that the Asset answered immediately.

“We built explosives,” the Asset said.

“And?”

“That’s all we did together.”

“Explain,” the man ordered without raising his voice.

“Once the explosives were assembled Nikolaev sent me to place the bombs while he set the self-destruct,” the Asset said.

“He didn’t go with you?”

“No.”

“Alright. Tell me what you did.”

“I placed the bombs, connected them so they’d go off in succession, and then connected the timer to the door mechanism,” the Asset explained.

“The timer?”

“Yes.”

“That wasn’t what you were told to do,” the Asset’s handler said.

“Who gave the order to use a timer?” said the unknown man.

“Nikolaev gave the timer to me with the other bomb components,” the Asset said. “He told me to set it for five minutes. He thought it would be a good idea to allow the enemy to get further inside before the explosives went off.”

“So you went off to set the explosives alone, but you saw Nikolaev before you boarded the transport,” said the man.

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“In the computer lab.”

“What was he doing?” the Asset’s handler said impatiently.

“He said he was finishing up setting the self-destruct,” the Asset said.

“Did you believe him?” the stranger said.

The Asset tilted his head as if the question did not compute. “It’s not my place to believe him,” the Asset said, “only to do what I’m told to do.”

“And do you always do what you’re told?”

The Asset let his gaze go far away. “I think . . . no. I’ve been . . . punished?”

“Do you like being punished?”

The shudder that wracked the Asset wasn’t faked, nor was the slight quaver in his voice. “No.”

“Then let’s make sure we never have to do that again.”

“Yes, sir,” the Asset said, his voice low.

“We need to proceed with the presumption that Nikolaev is a traitor,” the unknown man said, “and that SHIELD has not only whatever intel he provides to them, but also whatever information didn’t get wiped from the hard drives or removed from the base.”

“It shouldn’t be much,” the Asset’s handler said.

“Let’s hope not,” the other man said, and even to the Asset it sounded like a threat.

“Can you use your position to uncover what they found?” the Asset’s handler said.

“I need to be careful,” the man said, “but I’ll poke around. In the meantime, let’s presume they at least know the locations of all our bases and go on high alert.”

The Asset didn’t move when the men in the room all stood, and his handler escorted the unknown man to the door. The Asset swallowed hard when the man stopped next to him before leaving. He placed his hand on the Asset’s shoulder and said, “You did a good job, son.”

In the corridor, the man said, “How long has he been out of cryo?”

“Five days,” the handler said.

“Does he need to be put back in?”

Every muscle in the Asset’s body wanted to go taut, but he forced himself to remain at ease as he listened to the conversation taking place in the corridor. The Asset didn’t know whether the men knew that he could overhear them or not, but in either case he didn’t want to show any reaction to their comments. Even though the thought of being put back into cryo, and not knowing when he’d be brought out again, made his brain turn over various ways he could escape and make his way to Steve.

“That would depend on whether we’re going to continue with our primary mission, or if that has been moved to a lower priority. His mind doesn’t seem to be deteriorating, and putting him under only to bring him out a day or so later is a waste of resources.”

“The Captain _has_ been a pain in my ass,” the man said thoughtfully. “I’ll see what I can do about that. Be ready to go when you hear from me. He’s beginning to be more trouble than he’s worth.”

The Asset gritted his teeth, and then ran through the relaxation exercises that . . . someone had shown him once, beginning with the tips of his toes and concentrating on each muscle until he reached the top of his head.

~*~

Two days later the Asset was being suited up. He pretended to be paying more attention to the leather and metal armor they were attaching to his body, and the weapons they were readying for him, than the conversations going on around him, but the Asset took in every word, whether it was conjecture or fact.

Captain America had been sent on a ‘milk run’ to keep him out of the hair of the scientists trying to pull information off the ruined hard drives, and he only had minimal back-up. This time they’d take him for sure, and then HYDRA could take his blood and run tests, and they would be able to create more super soldiers just like him. There were even some who laughed at the notion of Captain America serving HYDRA.

The Asset let the words roll off his back like water off a duck. The image of a small avian creature flashed in the Asset’s mind, but he pushed it aside, not wanting it to distract him from the comments the soldiers were making without any care to the fact that he was standing there among them, as if they had no concerns at all about his loyalty. The Asset ducked his head to hide a smile that would’ve had all of the men in the room with him pissing their pants if they saw it.

By the time they led the Asset to the transport plane he’d composed himself and once more nothing showed on his face. Before they boarded, the Asset’s handler stopped him and said, “Bring me Steve Rogers.”

The Asset nodded, his face a blank mask, although inside he was thinking, no way in hell am I bringing Stevie to you. The plane ride was silent. At least, the men seated closest to the Asset were quiet; the Asset heard the soft murmur of voices from closer to the front of the plane, their distance from him decreasing their level of intimidation. The Asset closed his eyes and went over several options for warning Steve that he’d once again walked into a trap without being able to communicate with him telepathically.

The Asset held back a sigh.

~*~*~*~

Steve knew what was behind Fury’s orders as soon as he received them. He hesitated to even think the word ‘routine’ because that way lay Natasha blaming him for jinxing them. Still, Steve knew that Fury was merely giving him something to do so that he would stop hovering over the scientists going over the equipment they’d brought back from the HYDRA base, and the computer geeks trying to pull information off of hard drives that turned out to have been wiped. They said there was still some information to be pieced together if they could be left alone to do their work. Steve could take a hint.

When Fury suggested the mission, Steve had leapt at it. He’d already read everything they’d found about the cryo chamber and the chair, which wasn’t much, and yet too much. He hated thinking about Bucky being subjected to either, but the things he’d read about the chair made his blood run cold, made him want to kill someone as surely as he’d wanted to after Bucky had been lost to him. He’d needed to get away, even if he’d never admit it to Fury.

Steve was sitting outside a café with a cup of coffee at his elbow and a drawing pad and pencil in his hand. The village on the outskirts of Caracas, where the handoff of stolen government information was supposed to take place, was small, with dirt streets and buildings that bore the scars of history. It reminded Steve of Europe during the war, and a night he and Bucky had . . .

The comms crackled. “Heads up.”

Steve didn’t outwardly react to the sound of Clint’s voice in his ear, but he put the memory away for later. He reached out to pick up the small cup of coffee and take a sip, lowered the pad and glanced around him. A man was walking down the street, and from the way he kept checking over his shoulder, Steve guessed he was the man they were waiting for. “I see him,” Steve said, and then set the cup down and seemingly returned his attention to his drawing.

The man entered a shop next door to the café. Natasha was already inside perusing the woven blankets and hand-carved figurines and paintings all created by local artisans. “Le puedo ayudar?” a woman said, and Natasha replied, “Me gustaría comprar esto.”

That was Steve’s cue. He shoved the pad and pencil into the overly large bag at his feet, and then carried it with him into the café and asked for the restroom using the little Spanish he’d learned since being revived. Steve headed to the rear of the café, but instead of going to the restroom he exited out the back door, which deposited him into an alley behind the row of shops. Steve looked one way, then the other, but there was no sign of their target having exited the neighboring shop.

There was a thud behind him, and when Steve turned back there was a man standing in the middle of the previously empty alley. He wore black leather and metal armor that gleamed in the sunlight. He had a black leather glove on one hand, and the other hand, the entire arm, appeared to be made out of metal. He had long dark hair that the breeze blew into his face, the bottom half of which was covered by a mask.

“Um, guys?” Steve said. “It’s possible that our cover has been blown. Either that, or we’ve walked into another trap. Guys?” Steve said again when there was no reply.

Their comms must be jammed, which meant that Steve was on his own until the others figured out what was going on and showed up. Steve unzipped the bag and withdrew his shield, expecting the man to open fire on him at any moment with one of the guns strapped to his body. Instead, the man walked toward Steve as if he had all the time in the world.

Steve didn’t want to wait; he threw the shield. The man looked momentarily surprised by the move, but instead of ducking out of the way he caught the shield, then gave it a look before throwing it back at Steve. No, _to_ Steve. Steve held the shield in fingers he couldn’t make work to release it as he studied the man approaching him. He couldn’t make out the shape of the body underneath all the layers, and the hair and the stride were different, but the eyes . . .

“Bucky?” Steve said.

[](http://imgur.com/EIF8IVH)

The man raised a hand in which he held a knife. Instead of throwing it, he placed his hand in front of his face, the blade positioned in front of the place his lips would be if they weren’t hidden behind a mask, as if he was telling Steve to be quiet. And then he threw the knife. Steve raised the shield to deflect the knife and in a blink the man, the soldier, was upon him. There was another knife in his hand and he struck out at Steve with it. Steve blocked the blow, then had to block another with his arm when the soldier tossed the knife in the air and caught it in his other hand.

Steve would’ve been impressed if the soldier wasn’t trying to kill him. They were locked together now, like two bucks who’d gotten their antlers entangled. It was all Steve could do to keep the blade from doing more than piercing his leather jacket. Suddenly the soldier stumbled and his weight shifted. With the knife still in his hand, the soldier pointed the blade at the side of his face. It took Steve a moment to realize that he was showing Steve his comms, and then the soldier was back in control and aiming a kick at Steve’s knee.

Steve blocked the soldier’s foot, then the knife, and then he slammed the flat of the shield against the side of the soldier’s head. The soldier appeared stunned for a moment, but then he shook it off and came after Steve again.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” the soldier said.

The voice was muffled behind the mask, and it had been so long since Steve had heard Bucky’s voice outside of his head, almost a year now in Steve-time, that Steve couldn’t be sure if the soldier was Bucky. Steve blocked again with the shield, and then he threw a punch at the soldier’s face. Instead of connecting the blow, Steve wrapped his fingers around the cord hanging from the soldier’s ear and yanked. The earbud came free, and with it the mask.

Steve stood there stunned as he tried to catalogue all the changes to Bucky’s face. Bucky frowned and struck out at Steve, who reflexively raised the shield to block it. “Fight me!” Bucky growled.

“Bucky,” Steve said, unable to think of anything else.

Bucky narrowed his eyes and said, “Who the hell is Bucky?”

The words, a repeat of the words the wolf had spoken into his mind all those months ago, were like ice in Steve’s veins, but then Bucky gave the mask in Steve’s hand a significant look. Steve realized that Bucky must think they might still be overheard. Steve dropped the mask and earbud to the ground and stomped on it.

Bucky’s shoulders drooped a little bit in relief, but then he attacked again. Steve couldn’t stop the grin from forming as they sparred.

“Jesus christ, Steve,” Bucky said, frustrated. “You’re my mission. I’m supposed to be trying to capture you here. The least you could do is stop looking so happy to see me.”

Steve’s smile widened. “You’re my friend. And I’ve missed you.”

Bucky looked like he didn’t know what to do with that information. He shook away the confusion and turned a serious expression on Steve. “This is the last mission to try and capture you alive,” he said.

Steve was starting to get winded because Bucky wasn’t pulling his punches and Steve had to move fast to keep up with him. Also, he kept getting distracted as memories of the past rose, reminding him of the times he and Bucky had sparred during the war, both made stronger by the experiments that had been performed on them, Bucky occasionally shifting and pouncing on Steve . . .

“If they’re going to try and kill me anyway,” Steve said urgently, “you should come with me now.”

Bucky shook his head. “I can’t. There’s . . . There was a man.”

“A man?” Steve said as he aimed a kick at Bucky’s knee.

Bucky used to leave that side exposed, but he twisted and smashed Steve’s leg away, and then punched so hard that the force against the shield moved Steve back a few steps.

“Your arm,” Steve said.

Bucky raised his arm and folded his fingers into a fist. “You like it? HYDRA got a hold of some Stark tech and built it. Enhances my own strength. They’re waiting for you at the end of the alley, so you need to knock me out now so you can escape.”

Bucky changed the topic so abruptly that it took Steve a moment to realize what he was saying.

“What? Bucky, no!”

“I’ll heal,” Bucky said. “If I just let you go they’ll . . . punish me.”

Steve could tell that it was difficult for Bucky to speak those words. It was difficult for Steve to hear them, and imagine them putting Bucky in the chair.

“What is so important about the man?” Steve said, almost pleading.

“I don’t know,” Bucky said as he casually punched Steve in the mouth, almost as if he was trying to rile him up. “He was HYDRA, but he was something else, too.”

Steve ducked a second punch and slammed his fist into Bucky’s ribs. “What do you mean?”

“He made sure you were here,” Bucky said.

“How could he do that?”

“I don’t know.” Bucky looked up without turning his head. “It’s time.”

Clint called out, “Cap! Get down!”

“I’ve got this!” Steve called back. “Take care of them!” He pointed to his rear just as a HYDRA strike team poured out of the building at the end of the alley in which they’d been taking cover.

“With pleasure,” Clint said, and the next sound Steve heard was the ‘thwang’ of the bow string and the grunts of soldiers who’d been shot with arrows.

“Bucky,” Steve said one more time, knowing he couldn’t change Bucky’s mind, but needing to make the attempt. “Please don’t make me do this.”

“You’re my mission,” Bucky said. “Keeping you safe has always been my mission.”

From the sound of fighting behind him, Steve knew that Natasha had joined them. Frustrated that he was being forced to leave Bucky behind once more, Steve felt the prickle of tears behind his eyes. He stepped forward and grabbed Bucky around the neck as if he was going to choke him.

“Please come back to me, Buck,” Steve whispered, and then he pressed a kiss to Bucky’s lips before releasing him and stepping back.

Bucky looked stunned, which made it easy for Steve to bring the edge of his shield down on the side of Bucky’s head. Bucky went to a knee, but wasn’t knocked out. He shook his head as if he was seeing stars. Steve made a silent prayer for forgiveness and then he kicked Bucky in the temple.

~*~*~*~

“You failed,” the Asset’s handler said.

“Yes,” the Asset said in seeming agreement. He’d known this moment was coming since he’d chosen to help Steve back at the cabin in a forest in Minnesota. “The target was strong. Fast.”

“You should’ve been stronger, faster.”

The Asset bowed his head and did not refute the charge.

“Son,” said the man the Asset had only seen once before. “Yakov.”

The Asset raised his head and turned his gaze to the large screen on the wall.

“Did the target speak to you?”

“Yes,” the Asset said, adding confusion to his voice.

“What did he say?”

“A name, I think,” the Asset said.

“Can you remember the name?” the man said, his voice gentle and full of concern.

The Asset forced his features into a frown. “Bucky?” he said, sounding as if he wasn’t certain.

“Did you recognize the name?” the Asset’s handler said sharply.

“Yes,” the Asset said. “You mentioned it in a briefing.”

“Anything else?” the other man said.

“No,” the Asset said. He made himself frown. “Should I?”

“No,” the man on the screen said, then to the Asset’s handler, “Have someone take care of his injuries, and then prepare him for the next mission.”

The Asset swallowed hard, but didn’t otherwise react. Prepare meant wipe, which meant pain and the loss of some of the memories he’d worked so hard to collect and save. The thought of losing something important sent a surge of rebellion through the Asset. For a moment he considered attempting to fight his way out of the base, but he knew that he would never make it – not alive, anyway – and besides, Steve still needed him.

The Asset was taken to medical and he sat still and compliant as they tended to his wounds. They set him in the chair, strapped down his arms and head, and held out the mouth guard to him. The Asset opened his mouth and let them slip it between his teeth and then he bit down and it reminded him of the way Steve had treated him so gently in the cabin.

It was the last thought the Asset had before someone turned on the machine. The Asset’s body jerked, and the pain was akin to someone taking a pickaxe to his head. The Asset screamed, and screamed. Inside his head someone else was screaming, _Bucky! Bucky! Bucky!_

~*~

The Asset woke slowly, brain and body both sluggish. It was the first sign that he was not being brought out of cryostasis, but had spent some time in the chair. His head pounded and he could barely remember his own name, Bucky. No, that wasn’t right, he was the Asset. Where had Bucky come from? As if that thought opened the flood gates, the Asset was inundated with memories that all came down to one person – Steve.

Seeing Steve at the cabin, hearing another voice inside his head for the first time in . . . ever maybe, some part of the Asset sensing a familiarity in the other man. Romania, Austria, Venezuela. The kiss.

The Asset groaned. No one rushed to his side with a worried, “Buck?” No one pressed a cold cloth to his head, or ran a gentle hand through his hair, but the Asset’s brain still supplied him with the echo of someone’s voice, the ghost of their touch.

When the Asset opened his eyes there was a man in a white lab coat standing near him, expression clinical and detached. Bucky could smell the fear on him. The Asset accepted the ice chips the doctor spooned into his mouth. The irony of a man who was frozen most of the time needing ice chips was not lost on Bucky. Ice chips became water, became a nutritional drink that tasted like ass, and then the Asset was allowed to stand up.

The Asset was taken to the shower so he could wash away any remaining evidence that he’d soiled himself while in the chair. He was dressed in grey camo BDUs, a black t-shirt, and a pair of black combat boots, then taken to the briefing room. The only person waiting for him was the man from . . . the Asset couldn’t remember when.

“Hello, son,” the man said. He indicated a chair. “Have a seat.”

The Asset sat.

“I know you’re tired,” the man said, though the Asset hadn’t spoken. “But your work has been a gift to mankind. You shaped this century, and I need you to do it one more time.”

The man slid a file closer to the Asset and opened it. A face stared back at him, a young man in uniform.

“Do you recognize this man?”

It was the same face the Asset saw looking back at him the few times they allowed him to use a mirror, but younger, and much more innocent. The Asset shook his head and said, “No,” because whoever that man was, whoever the Asset had been in another lifetime, he wasn’t that man anymore.

“What about this man?” the man said as he slid the photo aside to reveal the one behind it. Steve.

Bucky reached out to touch the photo, frowning as pain stabbed into his head. “I feel like I should?”

“He’s standing in the way of our work, of the good we’re trying to accomplish, the peace we’re trying to create. We’ve tried to take him alive, but he’s made it impossible. So now we need to take him out.”

“Gotovy k soblyudeniyu,” the Asset said.

“This man is your mission,” the man said.

Yes, Bucky thought. Keeping Steve safe had always been his mission. “Budet sdelano,” the Asset said.

“Let’s get you ready then,” the man said.

~*~*~*~

Natasha had managed to intercept the handoff of information, so they were sharing the Quinjet with two men – one alive, if scared out of his mind, and the other dead due to a cyanide capsule hidden in his tooth. Because they had an audience, Natasha and Clint remained silent. That suited Steve just fine; after this latest meeting with Bucky he had a lot to think about.

 _He made sure you were there._ Steve kept hearing Bucky’s words, the certainty in his voice, even if he couldn’t explain it. Who would be in a position to make sure that Steve had been on this mission? The only answer Steve could come up with was one he didn’t want to have to consider – it could only have been someone inside SHIELD.

When they arrived back at HQ, Steve left Natasha and Clint to turn over their prisoner and headed straight for Fury’s office. Fury looked resigned, but not surprised when Steve pushed his way into the office without knocking. Before Fury could comment, Steve spoke.

“Who told you to send me on this mission?”

“No one told me to send you on this mission,” Fury said. “I sent you on this mission because you were getting on my damned nerves. You were getting on everyone’s . . .”

“What?” Steve said when Fury fell silent.

“. . . damned nerves,” Fury finished, though his mind appeared to be elsewhere.

“You thought of something.”

Fury turned his eye onto Steve. “No one told me to send you on this specific mission,” he said slowly, as if he was still trying to put the pieces together himself. “But someone did put the bug in my ear that it might be a good idea to get you out of here.”

“Who?” Steve demanded.

Fury shook his head. “What exactly are you suggesting here?”

“That HYDRA has someone inside SHIELD,” Steve said, though the words tasted like ashes on his tongue. SHIELD was Peggy’s and Howard’s legacy, and HYDRA was supposed to be gone, Steve had died to make sure that happened, but HYDRA was still out there and they had Bucky and everything was upside down.

Fury shook his head in denial. “No. Not him. That’s impossible. Not him,” he repeated more softly.

“Who?” Steve demanded again.

Fury opened his mouth, but Steve didn’t find out what he was going to say because suddenly Bucky’s voice was inside Steve’s head. There were no words this time, just the primal screams of a man in horrific pain. Steve knew they’d put Bucky in that chair, knew that it was because he’d returned empty-handed. They needed to wipe him, create a clean slate on which to start over.

Steve’s heart bled for the excruciating pain Bucky was suffering, and with the fear that this time they might wipe all of Steve out of his head. Steve yelled for Bucky, called his name over and over again, but all he heard in return were the screams. Steve’s mind fell abruptly silent, and then everything went black.

~*~

Steve knew he was in Medical before he opened his eyes; he recognized the scent, the sounds. He couldn’t remember what had happened to put him there; he hadn’t gotten sick or needed more than a few stitches since the serum. It all came back in a rush and Steve couldn’t hold back the gasp at the memory of Bucky’s screams. Steve’s eyes opened and he jerked upright.

Fury sat beside the bed, but he didn’t reach out to touch Steve. He waited until he knew that Steve had recognized him, then merely said, “You alright?”

Steve shook his head. He tried calling out for Bucky inside his mind but there was no answer. “How’d I get here?” Steve said, pushing the blankets back and turning so he could put his feet on the floor.

“You passed out,” Fury said. “Looked like you were having a seizure.”

“That’s n–,” Steve began, but a look from Fury cut him off.

“All your vitals check out,” Fury said. “They said they’d let you out of here once you woke up and they could run some tests.”

“What kind of tests?”

“I don’t know what kind of tests!” Fury said testily. “They probably want to make sure your eyes track, or that you can walk a straight line.”

Fury was tapping his finger on the arm of the chair, and Steve was just about to tell him to knock it off because it was annoying when he recognized it as Morse code. Steve’s eyes went wide and Fury rolled his eye when he realized that Steve finally got it.

“It’s not like I was drunk,” Steve said belatedly, adding, “I can’t even get drunk.”

“Well no one passes out without a reason,” Fury said, but Steve was barely listening, concentrating instead on the tapping of his finger.

“How long am I going to have to wait?” Steve said.

“Shouldn’t be long now,” Fury said, and even though he was concentrating on the code Fury was tapping out, Steve could hear the double meaning in the words.

Finally Fury’s finger stilled. Steve’s heart beat raced. The message had sounded innocuous, but if Fury was making a point of giving it to Steve in code, then it was anything but.

_don’t go home_

Fury had tapped it out three times before stopping to make sure that Steve understood both the message and the gravity of it. Before Steve could tap out any of the questions spinning around inside his head, like where was he supposed to go, there was movement in the doorway. Steve raised his head, expecting to see a nurse, but it was Natasha.

“Hey, cowboy,” Natasha said with fake cheer. “Ready to get out of here?”

“Yes,” Steve said with relief. He glanced at Fury, who nodded. Natasha could be trusted in this matter.

Fury stood as Steve pushed up onto his feet, reaching out a hand in case Steve felt wobbly. He did, but it wasn’t physical. Steve glanced towards Fury and caught a glimpse of the shoulder holster he was wearing beneath his leather duster. When his gaze caught Fury’s he saw the urgency in the other man’s expression.

Steve had even more questions now, but Fury took Steve’s hand and tapped out another message. _talk later_

“I don’t have to remind you that you signed a non-disclosure agreement, do I?” Fury said before he left the room.

~*~

Natasha took Steve down a service elevator to the parking garage where Clint was waiting with a white panel van. He opened the rear doors without a word and Natasha hopped in. With a look at Clint, Steve followed her.

Steve waited until Clint had pulled out onto the street before he opened his mouth to ask where they were going. Before he could get the words out, Natasha pressed a finger to her own lips. It reminded Steve of Bucky’s silencing gesture in Caracas, and he reached out with his mind in an attempt to contact Bucky. Again there was no answer.

Steve remained silent for the rest of the drive. When the van stopped, Natasha waited for the rear doors to open before moving. Once they were outside the van, Steve looked around. They were parked in an alley. “Are we gonna get towed if we park here?”

“Nah,” Clint said as he headed for the back door of the building. “I own the apartment building.”

“You . . . what?”

Neither Clint nor Natasha answered. Steve followed them as they went to the stairwell.

“No elevator?”

“Elevator’s broken,” Clint said.

“Again,” Natasha added.

“Yeah, the landlord here sucks.”

“I thought you . . . never mind,” Steve said as he concentrated on climbing the stairs.

“I keep hiring apartment managers, but they don’t stick around long. The Russians either threaten them off or buy them off.”

“The Russians?”

“It’s a long story,” Clint said.

They stepped out of the stairwell and Clint led them down the corridor. From down the hall, Steve heard a dog barking. Steve was surprised when Clint stopped at that very door, behind which the barking became even more frenzied. Clint used his key to gain entrance, but Steve noticed that there was also a thumb print scanner that you wouldn’t notice if you weren’t looking for it, or watching Clint press his thumb to it.

Clint opened the door and sang out, “Honey, I’m home,” as he stepped into the apartment. He was immediately attacked by a dog, and he went to his knees to pet it and let it welcome him home.

“Quit calling me honey,” an unfamiliar female voice said from the couch.

“Good to see you, Hawkeye,” Clint said.

“Wish I could say the same, Hawkeye,” the young woman said with a grin, earning a smile from Clint.

Clint rose to his feet and left the dog to sniff and lick Natasha next. Steve didn’t pay attention to where Clint was going, too interested in watching Natasha _let_ the dog sniff and lick her as she doled out pats and scritches.

“I hope you’ve got enough there for company,” Clint said softly. “Also, you haven’t been on your feet long, have you?”

The dog moved on to Steve, and Steve couldn’t resist going to his knees and giving the dog a good petting once it had satisfied itself that he wasn’t a threat. Natasha stepped away and left Steve to it.

“No, dad,” a familiar voice said in reply to Clint’s query, then, “Hello, Natasha.”

“Phil,” Natasha said, and Steve’s head went up. “You’re looking better.”

“I’m feeling better,” Phil . . . Agent Coulson said.

Steve stood and stared, ignoring the dog’s entreaties for more pets until it went over to the girl on the couch, who obliged it.

“Agent Coulson?” Steve said, unable to hide his shock and confusion.

Coulson turned away from the stove to glance into the living room. “Captain Rogers,” he said, sounding as surprised to see Steve as Steve was to see him. Except Steve thought that Coulson was dead, so probably not quite as surprised.

“I thought you were dead,” Steve blurted out.

“I was,” Coulson said. “For forty seconds . . .”

“Eight,” Clint said lightly, but there was a bitter twist to his lips.

Coulson ignored Clint’s comment, but reached out to slap the hand Clint was reaching towards the pot bubbling on the stove. “But I’m better now.”

“There’s a lot of that going around,” Steve said.

“We couldn’t tell you Phil was alive for stupid SHIELD-related reasons,” Clint said, “but Fury has apparently decided that whatever’s going on with you trumps the whole ‘can’t tell people Phil’s alive’ thing, so, here we are.”

Natasha wandered back to the living room and gave Steve’s arm a squeeze as she passed him. At least Steve now understood why Fury had reminded him of the NDA he’d signed when he joined SHIELD. The next few minutes were a flurry of introductions (“Wait, there are two Hawkeyes?”) and food and explanations.

Steve was a little bit relieved when Agent Coulson’s (“Call me Phil.”) eyes went wide and he said, “Sergeant Barnes?” with nearly as much poorly hidden excitement as he’d once greeted Steve.

Fury and Hill arrived while they were still eating. Clint put a hand on Phil’s shoulder to stop him from rising and got out two more place settings himself. Hill gave Steve a flash drive and Phil let him borrow a laptop. Steve tried not to fidget while he waited for the drive to open and load the data. There was a password ( _fuckingsonofabitch_ ) that Steve typed in impatiently, and then a photo appeared on the screen.

Steve sat back in surprise. “I know him.”

“We all know him,” Hill said with a growl.

“Who is it?” Clint said.

Steve turned the laptop so that the others could see the screen.

“Alexander Pierce?” Phil said.

“Perfect cover,” Natasha said. “Being Secretary to the WSC gives him access to . . . everything.”

“Isn’t he a friend of yours?” Clint said to Fury.

“This,” Fury said, “is why I have trust issues.”

“What are we going to do?” Steve said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Spanish Translations:
> 
> Le puedo ayudar? – May I help you?
> 
> Me gustaría comprar esto – I’d like to purchase this
> 
> 2\. Russian Translations:
> 
> Yakov – James
> 
> Gotovy k soblyudeniyu – Ready to comply
> 
> Budet sdelano – It will be done


	3. Chapter 3

It wasn’t often that the Asset had been dressed to blend in on his missions. Usually he was sent to recon or infiltrate in his wolf form, or he was geared up as the soldier to bring fear (followed quickly by death) to whoever he faced. Fitting in had rarely been a requirement.

Before they could shave him, the man the Asset had met before the last mission, the man who had sent Steve to be captured, said, “No, leave it. We want him to be recognizable, but he should still look a little bit pathetic. We want Captain Rogers off-guard when he sees him.”

They did comb Bucky’s hair. Then he was dressed in a pair of black cargo pants, a long-sleeved black t-shirt, and the black combat boots. Over that he wore a reinforced black leather jacket. They escorted him to the armory where he was allowed to choose weapons that would pass through metal detectors.

Since this mission was supposed to be carried out in close quarters, the Asset looked at the knives. He stuffed a composite pocketknife into the front pocket of his cargo pants, hid two push daggers in his boots, slid two covert cutters into the sheaths hidden in the sleeves of the jacket, and tucked a couple of spikes into the additional pockets of his cargo pants.

The Asset hesitated over the guns. Would they think it odd if he took one or two? Or would they think it odd if he didn’t? Bucky reached out and grabbed two hand guns and a holster that would allow him to carry them concealed beneath the jacket between his shoulder blades. He was assisted out of the jacket and into the holster. The guns were secured and he was assisted back into the jacket. Bucky reached for the guns and drew them to make sure they didn’t get caught up on anything.

The Asset glanced at the metal sleeve. They noticed. “You’re not supposed to stand out.”

“The target thinks I have a metal arm,” the Asset said.

“I’m sure you can think of an explanation.”

The Asset curled his fingers into a fist, and slowly uncurled them, feeling the phantom sensation of the sleeve against his skin. He let them lead him out of the armory.

Back in the briefing room the man looked Bucky over. He nodded his head and said to the Asset’s handler, “Just recognizable enough.” He sat down without looking in Bucky’s direction again. “Alright, let’s go over the mission.”

It was pretty simple: the Asset was to find Steve, pretend he’d escaped from HYDRA, and when he had gained Steve’s trust enough to get close to him, kill him. The Asset would be driven into New York City and dropped off several blocks from the target’s apartment. There was no mention of an extraction plan. Bucky didn’t bring it up; he knew what that meant – either they expected the Asset to find his own way back to them, or they didn’t expect the Asset to survive the mission.

The Asset’s handler took the man aside. Bucky could hear him arguing for an exfil plan based on the value of the Asset to their organization. The man replied that the mission was more important, and that the Asset’s value would be in taking out the target. So, not survive the mission, then.

Bucky stared hard at the table as he listened, pretending to hear nothing. When the men moved further off and lowered their voices even more, Bucky realized what he’d been staring blindly at. Next to the files the man had been looking at was a flash drive. He didn’t know what kind of information it contained, but perhaps it was something that would help Steve.

Without thinking about it, the Asset stood and moved silently to the end of the table. He reached out and palmed the flash drive.

“What are you doing?” the man said.

The Asset turned, face expressionless, and held up the rubber band he’d picked up. He indicated the hair hanging in his face.

“You won’t need that,” the man said. He showed no fear when he moved closer to the Asset and took the rubber band away from him. “Here.”

The man handed a ball cap to the Asset. Bucky remembered sitting in the bleachers and watching a game where men tried to hit a ball with a wooden stick . . . the word ‘baseball’ flashed through his mind. Bucky pushed his hair back and placed the cap on his head.

The man smiled. It would’ve been comforting if he hadn’t just ordered the Asset to kill Steve. He placed a hand on the Asset’s shoulder. “Your country thanks you for your service.”

_The 107th. Sergeant James Barnes, shipping out for England first thing tomorrow._

The Asset straightened his shoulders and went stiff so he didn’t stumble. If the man took it as a reaction to the false praise, then so much the better.

_You ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death? Hell, no. That little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb to run away from a fight, I'm following him._

Bucky did stumble at that memory, but the man had turned away and was no longer paying him any attention.

“Director Pierce, I beg you to reconsider,” the Asset’s handler said.

Even still stunned from the memory he’d just experienced, Bucky noted the name. While the other men were distracted, Bucky removed the hat as if he needed to adjust it. He slipped the flash drive out of his sleeve and beneath the rim of the hat before putting it back on.

“Don’t beg,” the man, Pierce said. “It’s unbecoming for an agent of HYDRA. But I tell you what, if you think that this asset is too valuable to the organization to be sent on this mission, we could send someone else.”

From the corner of his eye, the Asset saw his handler blanch at the implication.

“The asset is the only soldier that could get close to the target.”

“We’re agreed, then,” Pierce said with a deceptively soft voice.

The Asset’s handler swallowed hard. “Yes, sir.”

The Asset was loaded into an SUV and driven from the base. An hour and forty-two minutes later they arrived at a place called Brooklyn – it was a name he recalled from the most recent memory. The Asset was dropped off a few blocks from the target’s apartment and he put the memory out of his mind. He walked to the building and waited until someone exited. The Asset caught the door and entered, then took the stairs to the target’s, to Steve’s floor.

Bucky was outside the door to Steve’s apartment, fist raised to knock, when the world shifted and he saw another door.

_Thank you Buck, but I can get by on my own. The thing is, you don't have to. I'm with you 'til the end of the line, pal._

Bucky shook his head to dispel the image. He knocked, but there was no answer. Bucky glanced over his shoulder to confirm that he was alone, then he jimmied the lock. Jesus, Steve, he thought when it was much too easy to gain admittance to the apartment. Bucky listened closely before stepping inside. He closed the door behind him, then searched the entire apartment, making sure to put everything back where he’d found it so no one would know he’d been there.

Steve wasn’t home, and there was no indication where he’d gone. Bucky found himself lingering, though, when he opened a pad of paper that was sitting on the coffee table and saw drawings. There was a flash of memory; Steve, small and hunched over with a blanket around his shoulders, sitting on a couch with a drawing pad balanced on bent knees and the stub of a pencil in his fingers. Bucky went through the pages, being gentle with them so he didn’t inadvertently tear them. Most of the recent drawings were of him, in both his human and wolf form.

Bucky knew what he looked like – he’d seen his image in the mirror – and he didn’t look nearly as beautiful as Steve saw him. In either form. Bucky felt heat on his cheeks when he reached a page where Steve had drawn him in his human form, naked. Bucky slammed the pad closed and backed away from it as if it was a snake coiled to strike.

Since the target, Steve, wasn’t here, Bucky moved on to Plan B. He stole a motorcycle parked two blocks down from Steve’s apartment and followed the directions they’d given him to a place called Avengers Tower located in Manhattan.

~*~*~*~

They were still going over all the information Nick and Maria had brought with them when Steve’s phone rang.

“I just sent you a video file,” Tony said before Steve even had a chance to say ‘hello’. “Check it out and call me back.”

“Thank you, Tony,” Steve said, but he was talking to dead air.

Steve opened the message from Tony and played the video. He almost dropped the phone when he realized it was a video of Bucky. He was looking right into the camera and he spoke just one word: “Steve.”

“Bucky,” Steve said, breathless. He played the video again so he could look at the area around Bucky to determine where the video had been taken. He got distracted by Bucky’s face and had to watch it a third time. “This is right outside Avenger’s Tower!”

Of course it was, or Tony wouldn’t have been the one to send it to him. Steve called Tony.

“It took you long enough,” Tony said.

Steve ignored him. “When was this video taken?”

“Just a couple of minutes ago,” Tony said. “As soon as JARVIS realized the guy was asking for you he alerted me. I sent security down, but he was long gone. You recognize him?”

“Yeah,” Steve said and hung up. “He’s gone.” Steve let his hand fall into his lap, his shoulders slumped. “What’s he doing in New York City? If he’s looking for me, why did he leave?”

“I hate to leap to the obvious conclusion,” Natasha said.

“Then don’t,” Steve said more sharply than he’d meant to. Steve gave her an apologetic look, but said, “Bucky is not HYDRA, and he’s not going to kill me.”

“Can we see the video?” Clint said. “It’s just, we might see something you missed.”

“Yeah, sure,” Steve said. He pulled up the video and handed his phone to Maria, who sat beside him.

Maria watched the video, then said, “What’s he doing with his hands?”

“What do you mean?” Steve asked her.

Clint, who had come around to lean over Maria’s shoulder, answered. “Sign language.”

“Sign language?” Steve took the phone from Maria and played the video again, this time paying attention to Bucky’s hands. “I’m rusty,” Steve said, frustrated. There’d been little use for sign language during the war, after both of them had been experimented on, though they’d continued to use the sign for ‘I love you’ to the amusement of every single one of the Howling Commandos.

“Coney Island,” Clint said.

“What?”

Clint tilted his chin towards the phone. “That’s what he’s saying; Coney Island.”

“Coney Island,” Steve breathed. He turned sharp eyes on Clint. “You know sign language?”

“Yeah.” Clint shrugged. “There was an accident, an explosion. I lost my hearing for a while. How do you know it?”

“I had a lot of health problems when I was younger,” Steve said. “Before the serum. My hearing was one of them. I knew I was going to lose it eventually; Bucky made us both learn sign language.”

Steve remembered the night Bucky had come over with the book he’d borrowed from the library. He’d been so mad at Bucky because he’d been scared. He was already so sick; Steve didn’t know what he’d do when his frail body lost the ability to hear on top of everything else. But Bucky hadn’t backed down. The first sign he’d taught Steve was the one for ‘I love you’.

Steve stood suddenly and shoved his phone into his pocket.

“Where are you going?” Nick said when Steve grabbed his jacket off a hook by the door.

“I’m going to meet Bucky,” Steve said. “Where are you going?” he said when Natasha stood.

“I’m going with you,” Natasha said.

“No,” Steve said. The last thing he wanted was Bucky seeing Steve show up with Natasha and taking off. He might never find him again.

“You’re not going alone,” Nick said.

“This could be another trap,” Maria added.

Steve sighed when he saw Clint strapping on his collapsible bow and pulling a jacket on over it to hide it. “Fine. But I’m approaching Bucky alone. You guys can stay back and take care of any HYDRA agents that show up if it is a trap.”

“Deal,” Natasha said with a smile.

“We’ll see if we can come up with a plan while you’re gone,” Maria said as she handed out earbuds to the three of them, and then slipped one in her own ear. “If you need anything, let me know.”

~*~

The three of them walked through the Luna Park entrance together, and then they separated. Steve took the lead, heading directly towards the Cyclone. Clint and Natasha fell back and moved to flank Steve, watching his back. It took Steve longer than he wanted to reach the Cyclone because of the crowds.

Steve looked all around the Cyclone, but he didn’t know what he was looking for. Bucky wouldn’t have come in his wolf form, nor would he be dressed like the soldier he’d met in Venezuela. Steve was staring at the roller coaster, wondering what he should do next – he’d been so sure that this is where Bucky wanted to meet him – when the hair on his arms stood up.

A voice spoke from behind his right shoulder. “This is the ride that made you throw up?”

Steve turned around, surprise and relief making him almost giddy. “Bucky!” Steve wanted to grab him and hug him, but Bucky was keeping a distance between them that Steve didn’t want to invade without invitation. “How did you get here? To the city, I mean.”

“I escaped,” Bucky said even as he raised his hand just enough to get Steve’s attention. He snapped his first two fingers and thumb together. _No._

“Why?” Steve said.

“I remembered some things.” Bucky signed again. 

Steve shook his head; he didn’t understand. “What things?”

Bucky looked frustrated and signed again. “This place.”

“Give him an earbud,” Clint said in Steve’s ear. “I’ll translate.”

Before Steve could respond someone bumped into him and dropped an extra earbud into his hand. Steve held it out to Bucky who looked around before taking it and quickly placing it in his ear.

“Hey, buddy,” Clint said over the comms. “My name’s Clint. I’m gonna translate for Steve. He says his ASL is kinda rusty.”

Bucky looked relieved. He signed again. Out loud he said, “I’ve been here before.”

“Yes,” Steve said.

“They’re listening,” Clint translated.

Bucky gave a slight nod and signed some more. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

“I’m glad you came to me, Buck,” Steve said, unsure whether he wanted to drink in the sight of Bucky’s stubbled face or his flashing fingers.

“Jesus,” Clint said. “He’s bugged. Subcutaneous chip between his shoulder blades. His mission is to get close enough to kill you.”

“I didn’t know what to do,” Bucky said.

“You did the right thing, Buck,” Steve said as he took out his phone. “You can stay with me.”

Steve texted Natasha. _we need to get this thing out of him_

“On it,” Natasha said in his ear. “I’ll contact Hill.”

Natasha changed channels, but Steve’s immediate concern was Bucky. “Let’s go someplace where you can get cleaned up and get something to eat,” he said because he didn’t know what else to say.

“Okay,” Bucky agreed.

~*~*~*~

“Alright then,” Steve said. “Come on.”

Steve held out his hand and Bucky only hesitated for a moment before taking it. Steve led them towards the entrance and Bucky was glad to leave the crowds and the noise behind. There was a man waiting for them outside the entrance. Bucky’s first instinct was to do whatever was necessary to protect Steve, but before he could reach for one of his knives the man began to sign.

_Hi, I’m Clint. Is HYDRA following you?_

Bucky shook his head and signed, _No._

The man called Clint nodded, but he looked around anyway, as if he might be able to spot a tail. It made Bucky feel better to know that Steve had people around him who could watch his back.

A car pulled up to the curb in front of them with a squeal of tires and Bucky instinctively placed himself in front of Steve. Clint gave Bucky a look, but didn’t speak. The driver rolled down the window and said, “Someone call for an Uber?”

“Yes,” Steve said, gently moving out from behind Bucky and pulling him towards the car. “I did.”

Steve guided Bucky into the backseat and then climbed in after him; Clint walked around the car and, with one last glance around, slid into the front passenger seat. The redhead Bucky recognized from when she’d bumped into Steve and passed him the earbud Bucky now wore, was in the driver’s seat. She pulled away from the curb with enough speed to force both Bucky and Steve to be pressed against the seat back.

Steve squeezed Bucky’s hand, and then he started rubbing his thumb against the palm. No, not rubbing, Bucky realized, spelling. He spelled ‘ILU’ and Bucky over and over again. “Did we used to do that?” Bucky said.

Steve raised an eyebrow, and Bucky indicated their joined hands. Steve’s thumb froze in the process of drawing a ‘B’ and he swallowed hard. “Yes,” Steve said. He brushed his thumb across Bucky’s palm as if he could erase the letters he’d spelled out there, but they were indelible. Bucky would have to ask Steve later, when they were alone, what ‘ILU’ meant.

“Where are we going?” Bucky said.

Clint turned around in the seat and began signing, then paused when he realized that Steve might not be able to understand it. He shrugged, signed _Tony Stark_ , then started typing into his phone and showed it to Steve. Steve read the screen and nodded.

“Someplace safe,” Steve assured Bucky.

Bucky nodded, but he wasn’t thinking about safety. He was thinking about the metal sleeve he’d had to leave behind, and there was something else niggling at the back of his mind that he couldn’t quite pull to the front yet.

“Did I live here before?” Bucky said, wanting to think about something else.

“Yes,” Steve said. “We both did.”

“Brooklyn,” Bucky said, and Steve smiled as if Bucky had done something outstanding.

“Yes. We were just a couple of guys from Brooklyn.”

“What did we do?” Bucky said. He didn’t know where the question came from.

Steve made a sound that might’ve been a laugh. “I was an artist; sometimes people paid me for my art,” he said, “but that didn’t bring in much money. You worked on the docks because it paid good. We needed the money for my medicine.”

“You needed medicine?”

“Yeah. I was sick a lot when I was younger. You took care of me.”

Bucky frowned at a stab of pain in his head. “You were always picking fights,” he said.

Clint stifled a laugh and signed, _he still does_

“It’s not picking fights to stick up for people who can’t stick up for themselves, Buck,” Steve said, and it sounded like an old argument. He turned his attention to the redhead. “Hey, do you know where you’re going? It seems like we’ve been driving around in circles.”

“Tourists,” the redhead said, and then she pulled into a parking garage.

When the car came to a stop there was a man waiting for them. Something about him made that niggle tickle at the back of Bucky’s mind again.

“Come on, Buck, you’re safe here,” Steve said, misunderstanding Bucky’s reaction.

Bucky nodded and made himself relax; he shouldn’t give himself away like that. Bucky followed Steve out of the car and the man studied him.

“Welcome to Avengers Tower.”

“Tony,” Steve hissed. “Didn’t Maria tell you about the . . .”

“Subcutaneous bug, yes,” Stark said with a wave of his hand. “It was jammed the moment you drove into the garage. What I want to know is, how is it that Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes is still alive after all these years?”

“It’s a long story, Tony. Can we please discuss it later, after you . . .”

“HYDRA,” Bucky said.

Steve sighed.

“Not so long, then,” Stark said.

“HYDRA stole some of your tech,” Bucky said. “Made a metal sleeve that enhances my own strength.” Bucky held up his arm and made a fist. “Can you replicate it?”

Stark’s eyes went wide and his mouth opened and closed. He finally managed to speak. “HYDRA stole _my_ technology? How the hell did they get access to my technology?”

“That’s also a long story,” Steve said.

“We might have a traitor inside SHIELD,” the redhead said.

“Or not,” Steve said.

She shrugged unapologetically. “If he’s helping us out he should know what he’s getting into.”

“What _am_ I getting into?” Stark said.

“HYDRA sent me to kill Steve,” Bucky said.

Stark’s eyes went wide again. “Hmm. How’s that going for them?”

“Not well.”

“Also, really, HYDRA?”

“Seems like we missed a head,” Steve said, and Bucky could hear the self-recrimination in his voice.

“And it grew inside SHIELD?”

“Apparently,” Steve bit out. “Look, can we continue this after we take care of Bucky?”

“Sure,” Stark said. “JARVIS has already done a scan and has sent the information on the chip to my computer. My lab is all set up to remove it.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Steve said impatiently.

“Just one thing,” Stark said. He turned to Bucky. “Before we go up, you want to remove any of those weapons you have hidden upon your person?”

“No,” Bucky said. Stark sputtered and Bucky felt something that might’ve been amusement.

“Bucky,” Steve said. “You’re armed?”

“You think HYDRA sent me to kill you with just my good looks?” Bucky said. He had no idea where the words came from.

Steve looked flustered by the comment, but he merely said, “Show me.”

Bucky hesitated. These people were Steve’s friends, but that didn’t make them _his_ friends. Still, the most important thing was that Steve was protected, even if it was from him. Especially if it was from him.

Bucky withdrew the stakes from the pockets of the cargo pants, the push daggers from his boots, the cutters from his sleeves, and then reached behind his back to withdraw the twin guns from the holster. He laid everything on the hood of the car as he retrieved it and watched Steve’s eyes go rounder and rounder. When Bucky was done he glanced at Stark, who gave him a raised eyebrow. Bucky rolled his eyes and pulled out the pocketknife and added it to the pile.

“No automatic weapons or missile launchers?” Stark said.

“What part of ‘get close to Steve to kill him’ don’t you understand?” Bucky said.

“Snarky,” Stark said. “Are you still planning to kill Steve?”

Steve made a sound of protest, but Bucky kept his gaze on Stark. “I never planned to kill Steve,” he said.

“Hmm,” Stark said. “Well, let’s get that thing out of you.”

A box appeared and Stark swept up Bucky’s weapons into it, then gave the box to Bucky to carry. Bucky didn’t know what to make of that. “You’re giving these back to me?”

“I’m not carrying ‘em,” Stark said as he strode over to an elevator that stood open.

The five of them piled on and Stark said, “Lab, JARVIS.”

“Of course, sir,” the elevator replied.

Bucky jolted. “What the hell was that?”

“That’s JARVIS,” Stark said with pride. “It’s an AI.”

“The elevator talks to you,” Bucky said.

“The whole building talks to me.”

“You get used to it,” Steve said softly.

Silence fell. The hair on the back of Bucky’s neck rose. He glanced over his shoulder. The redhead was staring at him. Something about her eyes felt familiar. “Problem?” Bucky said.

“Depends,” she answered with a smile that wasn’t actually a smile.

Bucky wanted more of an answer, but it was clear that she wasn’t going to give him one. Instead of asking he turned to face forward once more and wasn’t glad that Steve reached out to squeeze his hand.

The elevator opened onto a lab. Stark stepped off and immediately began speaking to the empty lab. The AI JARVIS answered. Despite Steve’s assurance, Bucky doubted he’d get used to that.

“Okay,” Stark said, turning back to them with a flourish. “I have a work bench you can lie on for this, though that’s probably not very comfortable, and also I don’t know how you feel about being poked and prodded and if the bench will bring back bad memories, so I also have this.” Stark wheeled over a strange looking chair. “I borrowed it from the spa downstairs. It’s for neck and shoulder massages, but it should work for this, too.”

Bucky was overwhelmed, like a child with too much stimulation, and being given a choice as to whether he wanted to lie on the bench like a tool or sit in the chair like a person was suddenly too much.

As if he sensed Bucky’s predicament, Steve spoke up. “The chair.”

“The chair it is,” Stark said as if it was no big deal. He gestured towards Bucky. “Take off your coat and shirt and have a seat. Please.”

Bucky automatically complied; he slipped off the leather jacket and handed it and the hat to Steve, then removed the holster before reaching for the hem of his t-shirt. Steve gasped when Bucky raised the t-shirt. Steve didn’t touch him, but Bucky could feel the weight of his gaze. When he lowered his arms and could see him, Steve was staring at his left side. Bucky self-consciously reached up to touch the star that had been branded into his hide when he was in wolf form.

“How did they keep you from healing?” Steve said, sounding like he wanted to cry.

“I don’t know,” Bucky said.

Steve reached out, then drew his hand back without touching Bucky. “Did it hurt?”

“I don’t remember,” Bucky said, but in the back of his mind he heard himself scream.

Steve looked doubtful, but before he could respond, Stark spoke.

“Okay, you should probably have a seat. If you want to. No rush, except for how HYDRA’s probably wondering why they can’t hear you anymore and they’re out there searching for you right now. I like remodeling as much as the next guy, but I could do without having to make more repairs so soon. Plus, Pepper would kill me.”

~*~*~*~

Bucky pressed his lips together and Steve, remembering his own first impression of Tony, said, “Ignore him. Tony just likes to hear the sound of his own voice.”

“Ouch,” Tony said, dramatically clutching his chest.

Bucky snorted. “Sounds familiar.”

“Double ouch,” Tony said. “Did you just compare me to dear old dad?”

“I . . . don’t know,” Bucky said, looking lost as he searched for a memory that was out of reach.

Tony looked like he knew he’d said something wrong and didn’t know how to get out of it. Steve gave Tony a look meant to convey that it wasn’t his fault he’d stepped onto the landmine of Bucky’s memory, and then turned his attention to Bucky.

“It’s okay, Buck,” Steve said, wishing he could offer more than words. “Why don’t you sit down so we can get that chip out of you, and then we can figure out what we’re going to do next.”

Bucky nodded, but instead of sitting in the spa chair, he walked across the lab and came back rolling a regular office chair. He planted it in front of Tony and then straddled it backwards. Steve bit back a grin at the look of surprise on Tony’s face.

“I guess that works, too,” Tony said. “But I went down and borrowed the massage chair.”

“Don’t whine, Tony,” Steve said, “it’s unbecoming.” He squatted in front of Bucky. “You okay, Buck?”

Bucky’s arms were folded across the back of the chair, his chin resting on them. He nodded. When Steve made to stand up, one of Bucky’s hands shot out and grabbed Steve’s arm. Steve lowered himself again.

“You want me to stay?”

Bucky nodded.

“Alright.” Steve felt a surge of warmth at the thought that he could do something for Bucky when Bucky had been the one taking care of him for so much of their lives. He ducked his head as he knelt in front of Bucky so he didn’t give any of that away.

“Okay,” Tony said distractedly as he kept one eye on the holographic display JARVIS provided, “I’m going to start now. First I’m just going to touch your back and see if I can feel the chip in there.”

Bucky tensed, and Steve could see the effort it took for him to relax his muscles. Steve took Bucky’s hand off his arm and squeezed it. “Concentrate on me, Buck.”

Bucky stared at Steve so hard that he was certain he could feel it. “Let’s talk,” Steve said. “Is there something you want to know right now?”

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “How often did you pick fights?”

Steve sighed. “I’ve told you a million times, Buck . . .” He paused when he saw the corner’s of Bucky’s lips twitch. “That wasn’t funny.”

“It was a little bit funny,” Clint said.

Steve glanced up, startled. He’d been concentrating on Bucky and had forgotten that there were other people in the room. When his gaze found Bucky’s face again Bucky was fighting back a smile. “You just like to get me all riled up,” Steve said. It could’ve sounded like a complaint, but it was said with too much fondness.

“Do I?” Bucky said.

“Yes,” Steve said. He was suddenly hit with a wave of emotion and tears stung the back of his eyes.

“You’re not gonna cry are you?” Bucky said softly.

“No,” Steve said. “Maybe.” He stroked Bucky’s hand. “I missed you so damned much.” Steve sniffed and cleared his throat. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“Okay,” Bucky said. “You kissed me. In Venezuela.”

Steve froze. He heard Clint hiss, “He kissed him?” and Natasha shushing him.

“Um,” Steve said. “Yes? Sorry?”

“Why are you sorry?”

“If you didn’t like it?”

“I didn’t not like it,” Bucky said. “You surprised me.”

“I thought I might not see you again, Buck!” Steve said. “You were going back to HYDRA. Again! And . . .”

Steve cut off and looked back at Bucky as Bucky studied him.

“Was it the first time?”

Steve felt heat creeping up his cheeks. Not so much that he and Bucky were talking about this, but that they were talking about it in front of Clint, Natasha, and especially Tony. “No.”

Steve ignored the choked sound from someone and kept his eyes on Bucky’s face.

“Is that a thing we did before, kiss?”

Steve swallowed hard. “Sometimes, yes.”

Before Bucky could ask Steve another question, Tony said, “Done! Thank god. I don’t think I could take any more of ‘The Confessions of Nonagenarians’. Will this need stitches?”

“Let me see how deep of a cut you made,” Steve said. He rose to his feet but kept hold of Bucky’s hand, and peered over his shoulder. The slice was not very long and it looked like it was already healing, but Steve never liked to leave Bucky’s wounds unattended. “A butterfly bandage should do the trick.”

[](http://imgur.com/nDAyitr)

A moment later Tony had cleaned the cut and applied a butterfly bandage which he covered with an Iron Man band aid. “Seriously?” Steve said.

“It’s what all the best-dressed, get it, dressed, like dressing?” Tony shook his head. “Never mind . . . toddlers are wearing these days.”

“Including you?” Steve said.

“Especially me. Come take a look at this chip.”

Steve walked over, Bucky at his side. The chip was sitting on a tray, still covered with Bucky’s blood.

“It wasn’t just a bug,” Tony said. He pointed out a small metal wire that was so thin as to be almost invisible. “I had to separate the chip from the wire, and then withdraw the wire. It appears to have been attached to his nervous system. Like they were keeping track of his vitals, or something.”

Steve glanced at Bucky, whose expression had gone blank. “Buck?” Steve said worriedly.

Bucky appeared to not want to speak, but finally, with no inflection in his voice, he said, “They wanted to know when I was dead.”

“Like . . . for inventory purposes?” Tony said, sounding horrified.

“Tony,” Steve said, equally horrified.

“They wanted to know when I’d completed my mission,” Bucky said.

“How does you being dead have anything to do with you completing your mission?” Steve said.

“They sent him on a suicide mission,” Natasha said.

“Buck?” Steve said, dread filling him despite the fact that Bucky was right there in front of him.

“I was supposed to get close to you,” Bucky said. “Make you trust me so I could get close enough to kill you.”

“And then?” Steve said.

Bucky looked right at Steve. “And then your friends would kill me. Two birds,” Bucky said, then hesitated as if he didn’t know how to finish the phrase.

“One stone,” Steve supplied.

Bucky nodded.

“Shit,” Steve said. His knees went weak. “Shit, Bucky.”

Bucky was there, shoulder under Steve’s arm, before Steve’s legs could give out and topple him to the ground.

“They sent you here to die,” Steve said.

“They sent me here to kill you,” Bucky said. “And then die.”

Steve glared at Bucky. “Was that supposed to be funny? Because that was not funny.”

“I hate to interrupt,” Tony said. “What am I saying? No I don’t. Back to the chip. Now that we’ve separated it from your nervous system, HYDRA thinks you’re dead?”

“They probably thought I died the moment we drove into your garage and you started jamming the signal,” Bucky said.

“Huh. A heads up about that would’ve been nice,” Tony said.

“By the time you told me what you’d done it was too late,” Bucky said, looking like he expected to be reprimanded for the comment.

“Fair point,” Tony said.

“Maybe we can use that,” Natasha said.

“How?” Steve said. His legs were steadier under him, but he didn’t want Bucky to let go of him and so he continued to lean on Bucky as if his legs wouldn’t support him. Natasha gave him a knowing look that he ignored.

“If HYDRA thinks you’re dead, they’ll stop coming after you.”

“I think they’ll realize I’m alive when I continue going out on missions.”

“Yeah,” Clint said. “No. You’d be side-lined for a while until we can cut the heads off this organization for good.”

“I can’t just sit back and let everyone else fight this battle, _my_ battle,” Steve said.

Bucky sighed. “Jesus, Steve, why do you always have to throw yourself in the line of fire?”

Steve looked at Bucky and paused in his argument because now he didn’t know who he wanted to argue with. Natasha took the opportunity to speak.

“You’re not the only one at risk here. If they find out you’re still alive, they’ll suspect that Bucky is also still alive.”

“They wouldn’t have to suspect, because I’m not letting you go out there without me to have your back,” Bucky said. He spoke softly, firmly, and Steve knew that he would do it. Even if they locked him up, which Steve wouldn’t do, Bucky would find a way to protect Steve. Bucky had always done that, even before he had the wolf, and that hadn’t changed despite the seventy years they’d been separated because Bucky had once again been all about protecting Steve from the moment their minds had touched again.

“Bucky,” Steve said, and he didn’t know if it was an entreaty, or if he just couldn’t believe how much he and Bucky were connected.

“I’m with you ‘til the end of the line, pal,” Bucky said, and Steve didn’t try to stop the tears this time.

~*~*~*~

Bucky didn’t know what he’d said to make Steve start crying. He also didn’t know what he should do about it. “Steve,” Bucky said. “I said something wrong.”

Steve shook his head. “No.”

“It’s just, you’re crying.”

“I’m happy,” Steve said.

“You don’t look happy,” Bucky said, skeptical.

“You’re here,” Steve said, “so I’m happy.”

The door whooshed open behind Bucky. He immediately whirled around and placed himself between Steve and the door. Bucky reflexively went into a fighting stance. He had no weapons except himself, but that would be enough.

“We probably should’ve knocked,” said a tall black man wearing an eye patch and a long leather coat. He had stopped walking and held both of his hands out and away from his body to show that they held no weapons, but Bucky could see the outline of the shoulder holster beneath the coat.

“Nick,” Steve said. He curled his hand over Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky acknowledged it without taking his eyes off the intruders. “Bucky, this is Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD, and Maria Hill, Assistant Director. They’re friends.”

“Sergeant Barnes,” Nick Fury said gently. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, though I wish it were under better circumstances.”

“Hi,” the woman, Maria Hill said. “We’ve got a plan. Can we come in, or should we just tell you about it from here?”

Bucky gestured for them to stay where they were and tell them the plan from there. Hill rolled her eyes. Behind him Clint stifled a laugh.

“Fine,” Fury said. “Broad strokes – when Sergeant Barnes calls for extraction we’re going to be there. We either take out the team and go in, or we put a tracker on the vehicles, or on Barnes himself . . . What? Why are you all looking at me like I just kicked your damned puppy?”

No one spoke, so Bucky straightened out of his stance and said, “There won’t be an extraction.”

“What do you mean?” Fury said. “Of course there’s going to be an . . .”

“Nick,” Steve said firmly. “They didn’t . . . They aren’t . . .”

“They sent Barnes on a suicide mission,” the redhead finally said. “There are no plans to retrieve him.”

“The bad news,” Stark said.

“ _That_ wasn’t the bad news?” Fury said.

“The other bad news,” Stark amended, “is that since we jammed the chip, they probably think Bucky here is already dead. The good news is they probably also think Steve is dead so they’ll stop sending people to kill him. So long as we keep him hidden away until we take out the threat.”

“Which might be never,” Steve said as if he was personally offended by the notion of hiding out.

Fury ignored Steve. He turned to Hill. “We need to get the story out that Captain America has been killed by an unknown assailant.”

“On it,” Hill said.

Bucky liked how quickly they adapted to the new information, and how they ignored Steve’s protests that he didn’t want to hide away. He turned to Steve and just looked at him.

“Bucky, what?”

“I suppose we could just lead an assault on their base, go out in a blaze of glory,” Bucky said sarcastically.

“Bucky, no!” Steve said, sounding horrified. “That’s not what I . . .”

“You know where their base is?” Fury said.

Bucky shrugged. “I watched the road signs when they drove me here.”

“You watched the road signs,” Fury repeated.

“I don’t remember a lot,” Bucky said, “but I’m not stupid.”

“I didn’t mean to imply that you were,” Fury said. “I’m impressed that you thought to do that, but I was mostly surprised that they didn’t think to _keep_ you from doing that. It seems like a silly mistake to make.”

“Often it’s the little things that trip you up,” the redhead said. “Also, dead men tell no tales.”

“There’s that,” Fury said, then to Bucky, “Can you show us where the base is located?”

“If I had a map,” Bucky said.

“JARVIS,” Stark said. A holographic map immediately appeared and hovered in mid-air.

Bucky walked closer and studied the map. “Can you enlarge this area here?” Bucky said, drawing a circle around Brooklyn.

“Of course, Sergeant Barnes,” JARVIS said.

“You really get used to that?” Bucky said to Steve.

Steve shrugged and gave Bucky a smile.

Bucky placed his finger against the map and it pushed out the other side of the holographic image. He pulled his finger back and held it in the air, then started drawing a line, backtracking.

“You were in Brooklyn?” Steve said.

“They dropped me near your apartment,” Bucky said. “I, um, may have broken in.”

“That’s okay, Buck,” Steve said.

“I saw your drawing pad. I kind of remembered that you were an artist before you told me.”

“You did?” Steve said, sounding pleased. His expression changed. “You didn’t look through them, did you?”

“Why,” Bucky said, “something in there you don’t want me to see?”

Steve’s pale skin went pink. “There’s nothing in there you haven’t seen before,” he hedged. “Just, you might be confused if you don’t remember . . .”

Instead of answering Steve, Bucky said, “I need more down here.”

The map moved, and Bucky continued to trace a route down 95, then across 206 and 68, stopping in the middle of a bunch of smaller roads.

“Bucky,” Steve said, sounding strangled. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Bucky said, wondering why Steve was having such a reaction.

“Camp Lehigh,” Steve said. “That . . . that’s where I trained.”

“Son of a . . . ,” Fury said.

“I need access to a computer,” Hill told Stark. “I’ll pull up satellite images.”

“That base was decommissioned, but it’s still listed as an asset on the SHIELD rolls. Which reminds me.” He drew a file out of the pile Hill had set down and opened it as he walked across the lab to Bucky and Steve. “Do you recognize this man, Sergeant?”

Bucky glanced down at the photo Fury indicated. It was the man from the last couple of missions, the man he’d never seen before. Bucky turned to Steve. “That’s him,” he said. “That’s the man. No one used his name last time, but they did today. They called him Director Pierce.”

“Director Pierce,” Fury said disgustedly, closing the folder with more force than necessary. “That man . . . You think you know someone . . .”

Bucky gave Steve a questioning look.

“They were friends,” Steve said. “Before he discovered that Pierce was HYDRA.”

“Like you and me?” Bucky said.

“No, Bucky,” Steve said, reaching for Bucky’s hand again. (Bucky kind of liked it when Steve did that.) “Not like you and me, because you were never HYDRA. They hurt you, and they made you do things, but that’s on them, not you.” Steve paused, and Bucky could tell that he’d gone far away for a moment. “When you fell, when I thought you were dead, I wanted to hurt them, I wanted them to pay. That’s nothing to what I’m feeling right now. What they did to you all these years . . .”

Bucky touched Steve’s face with his free hand and Steve stopped speaking. “Don’t let them change who you are in here.” Bucky raised their joined hands and tapped them against Steve’s chest.

Steve looked like he was going to cry again. Bucky really hoped he didn’t.

“Aw, Buck,” Steve said.

~*~*~*~

“We’ve got a plan,” Maria said. “The start of a plan. Plan-esque.”

Steve blinked away the tears burning his eyes before turning to where Maria stood with Clint and Natasha. “What’s the plan?” he said without moving away from Bucky, the steel in his eyes daring any of them to say anything about it.

Maria laid out the plan in succinct terms: they were going to make it look like they were trying to hide the fact that Steve Rogers had been killed. If anyone was watching, they’d appreciate the subtlety. An unmarked coroner’s van would transport two bodies to the morgue. While any HYDRA agents were following that van, Clint and Natasha would drive Steve and Bucky to a safe house. Once they’d arrived safely, SHIELD would make a public announcement about the death of Captain America at the hands of an unknown assailant. In the meantime, they’d use people they could trust to execute a raid on the supposedly decommissioned base in New Jersey.

“Fine.” Steve hated the notion of being sidelined, even for one mission, but if it was the only way to protect Bucky he’d accept it. For now. “What about Pierce?”

“I’ll take care of Pierce,” Nick said resolutely.

“We need Clint’s van and a change of clothes for Barnes so he’s not immediately recognizable to his handlers,” Natasha said. “Just in case they’re looking for him,” she directed to Steve and Bucky.

Nick looked at Clint. “Take care of it.”

Clint nodded and pulled out his phone. Steve was distracted from what Clint was doing by Bucky tugging on his hand.

“What, Buck?” Steve said gently.

“I forgot something,” Bucky said urgently.

Steve felt the color drain out of his cheeks.

“No,” Bucky said, “I mean, I forgot to give you something.”

Bucky found the hat where Steve had left the clothes on a pile. He withdrew the flash drive and handed it to Steve.

“Bucky,” Steve said. “What is this?”

“I don’t know. I saw it on the table after the briefing and I took it. I thought it might be helpful, but maybe they wanted me to take it . . .”

“We’ll be careful,” Steve said, curling his fingers around the flash drive and Bucky’s fingers. “Tony,” Steve said without looking away from Bucky. He held out the flash drive and Tony swooped in and grabbed it out of his hand. “It could be another trap,” Steve warned.

“Don’t worry,” Tony said, already distracted by the possibilities, “I’ll open it on a laptop that isn’t connected to my system or SHIELD’s.”

“What?” Nick said.

“Oops,” Tony said, but he didn’t sound chastened.

“Clothes and the van have been taken care of,” Clint told Steve and Bucky.

Steve nodded his thanks, but Bucky was distracted by something near Tony. Steve released Bucky’s hand and watched him walk over to the work table where Tony had set up the laptop.

“Need something, Sergeant?” Tony said, not unkindly, Steve was glad to note.

Bucky picked up something off the table and showed it to Tony, who glanced over quickly, then did a double-take. “That’s it? Knock yourself out. Wait.” Tony snapped his fingers. “JARVIS, where do I keep the rubber bands?”

A drawer opened automatically and Steve bit back a smile when Bucky glared suspiciously up at the ceiling. Tony rolled his chair over to the open drawer and withdrew a handful of rubber bands and handed them to Bucky when he scooted back over to the table. “Red and blue,” he said. “You can match Cap’s SHIELD.”

Bucky ducked his head and glanced over at Steve. He looked away when Steve smiled at him. He stuffed all but one of the bands into his pocket and used the other to pull back his hair. Steve’s breath caught when Bucky dropped his hands and looked at Steve. He had to swallow hard before he could say, “It looks good.”

“A string of black SUVs and an unmarked coroner’s van just pulled into the parking garage,” Maria announced.

“Game on,” Clint said softly.

“What happens now?” Steve said.

“I go down and solemnly greet our agents,” Maria said.

“Are you sure we can trust them?”

“I handpicked them myself,” Maria said.

Steve didn’t remind her that Nick wouldn’t have believed Pierce was a traitor, either. This plan had to work in order to keep Bucky out of HYDRA’s hands. In order to burn HYDRA to the ground. Again.

“What about getting some of my stuff?” Steve said.

“You can’t go back to your apartment,” Natasha said. “But maybe, under the cover of a grieving friend, I can drop by and go through your things, pack up a bag for you.”

“Thank you, Natasha,” Steve said with genuine feeling.

Natasha nodded, and then wandered over to where Nick was standing behind Tony.

“You two watching over my shoulder isn’t going to help me decrypt this any faster,” Tony said. Neither of them moved away.

Steve thought about going after HYDRA. They had hard drives, if only they could recover some information off them, and now this flash drive. Surely there would be something on there they could use. Or, if HYDRA was hiding in plain sight by using SHIELD assets maybe they could go through all of the properties SHIELD held and see which ones were supposedly closed down. Or maybe Bucky would remember something more.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve said. “You remember that map I saw in the base where you were being held back during the war? The one that had all the HYDRA bases marked on it?”

Bucky shook his head. “No, sorry . . .”

“That’s okay,” Steve said. “I was just wondering if HYDRA still liked to leave maps of all their bases lying around.”

“I don’t remember seeing anything like that,” Bucky said.

“It was a long shot,” Steve said.

Maria returned. “Stage one has gone off without a hitch. Now we just need your ride to get here.”

Just as she said that the door whooshed open behind her and Phil Coulson stepped in carrying a shopping bag in one hand and holding a cane in the other.

Before Phil could say anything Nick turned to Clint. “What part of ‘top secret’ and ‘need to know’ don’t you understand?”

“You told me to take care of it,” Clint said without apology. “Who’d you think I was gonna call? Hey,” he said to Phil, his voice going soft. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Phil said. “You know I go stir crazy just sitting around.”

“And you wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to meet Sergeant Barnes,” Clint teased.

Phil’s face went red, but he went on blithely. “Here are the clothes you asked for. The van is parked down the street.”

“You didn’t walk far, did you?” Clint said.

“Kate dropped me off,” Phil assured him.

Clint led Phil over to Steve and Bucky. “Okay, we have a change of clothes for Bucky, and a getaway vehicle. Also, Bucky, this is my better half, Phil Coulson; Phil, Bucky Barnes. Phil’s an agent of SHIELD.”

“Hi,” Bucky said.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sergeant Barnes,” Phil said, but he didn’t reach for Bucky’s hand.

“You’re hurt,” Bucky said bluntly.

Steve’s eyes moved to Clint’s face, but if he still carried guilt about Phil’s injury he hid it well.

“I got stabbed,” Phil said. “There was this thing with Loki and aliens.”

“Loki?” Bucky said. “Aliens?”

“Yeah,” Clint said, sounding as if he was glad to be able to redirect the conversation. “Steve was in the middle of it, he can tell you all about it.”

Bucky turned to Steve. “You were in a battle with aliens?” he said in a deceptively soft voice.

“Yes,” Steve said. “But it wasn’t my fault this time, Buck. I didn’t start it.”

Bucky shook his head. “You never do, Stevie.”

Phil looked like he was going to burst a blood vessel, and Steve was shamefully glad when Clint said, “Why don’t we leave you two alone to discuss this,” and led him away. To stave off an argument, Steve suggested that Bucky change into the clothes Phil had brought for him, since they’d most likely be leaving soon. To everyone’s consternation (almost everyone’s, neither Tony nor Natasha seemed bothered), Bucky immediately started to unfasten his pants.

“You could use the lounge,” Tony suggested.

“Why?” Bucky said.

“For your privacy?” Tony said.

Bucky glanced towards the lounge Tony had indicated. “They don’t like to leave me alone,” he said.

Steve felt the overwhelming urge to hit someone, but forced himself to remain calm and say, “Whatever makes you comfortable, Buck.”

“I could try it,” Bucky said.

“Okay,” Steve said. “Come on.”

Steve led Bucky to the lounge, which contained a small kitchenette, a table, and a well-used couch. He stood in the doorway and turned his back to give Bucky privacy. Steve couldn’t look at anyone because he didn’t want them to see the pain mixed with anger in his eyes. He was going to make HYDRA hurt so bad for the things they’d done to Bucky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Uber launched in NYC in [May, 2011.](https://www.uber.com/blog/new-york-city/uber-nyc-launches-service/)


	4. Chapter 4

Bucky traded his black cargo pants and combat boots for the blue jeans, red shirt, and sneakers that Clint’s friend Phil had brought for him. It had been a long time since he’d worn anything so colorful and it seemed odd that the color would make him blend in rather than stand out. Of course, if anyone was looking for him, they’d be looking for someone wearing all black, so a bright color was probably a good idea.

“Steve,” Bucky said quietly.

Steve turned around immediately. When he saw Bucky his eyes went all soft, which made Bucky’s stomach do something that normally meant he was going to be sick, but this felt different.

“Yeah, Buck?” Steve said.

“Is this alright?” Bucky said, because Steve would tell him the truth.

“Yeah, Buck,” Steve said with a smile. “You look great.”

“Hi, Steve,” a female voice said.

Bucky felt a sense of irritation that they’d been interrupted because he liked the way Steve was looking at him. Steve’s smile changed; it was just as sincere, but different. Bucky filed that away to think about later.

“Hi, Pepper,” Steve said, giving the woman a hug. “What are you doing here?”

“Tony said there might be a hair emergency,” Pepper said, glancing at Bucky. “Hi.”

“Oh,” Steve said, reminded of the manners his mama had taught him. Bucky frowned at the tug of a memory that remained out of reach. “Pepper, this is Bucky; Buck, this is Pepper, Tony’s better half.”

“I’d object to that,” Stark said, “but it’s absolutely true, so . . .”

The woman, Pepper, gave Stark a fond look, then turned her attention back to Bucky. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Bucky. I’ve brought a brush and a comb because I didn’t know which would be best, and for some reason Tony asked me to bring the Captain America scrunchie he bought on e-Bay.”

Stark chuckled and Steve scowled at him, but the look he turned back onto Pepper, was kind. “Thank you, Pepper.”

“You’re welcome. I have an ulterior motive,” Pepper confided. “Now I’m going to go give Phil my best disappointed look.”

“I wanted to tell you!” Phil protested from the other side of the lab. “I wanted to tell _all_ of you.”

Pepper gave Steve a look that said she wasn’t accepting that excuse. Bucky almost felt sorry for Phil except he was glad she was leaving and that he’d have Steve all to himself again. Pepper handed the items she’d brought to Steve and headed towards Phil with a determined stride. Bucky peeked out of the room and saw that Phil was meeting his fate head-on rather than hiding behind Clint, though he was leaning heavily on the cane as if that might buy him some points. Bucky signed _good acting_ to Clint, who laughed.

“What?” Stark said. “What did he say?”

“None of your business, Tony,” Clint, still chuckling, said.

“JARVIS, you know sign language.”

“Yes, I do, sir,” JARVIS said, “but I believe that was a private communication of the type you tell me not to monitor.”

Stark looked betrayed.

Bucky laughed. “Thank you, JARVIS.”

“You’re welcome, Sergeant Barnes,” JARVIS said.

“I don’t know why I’m even helping you people,” Stark grumbled as he continued typing, trying to decrypt the flash drive.

“Because you can’t resist a puzzle,” Fury said.

When Bucky turned back to Steve, Steve was looking at him with an expression Bucky couldn’t decipher. Steve ducked his head as if he hadn’t wanted Bucky to see it, which made it all the more intriguing.

“What?” Bucky said.

“You talked to JARVIS,” Steve said, smiling.

Bucky shrugged as if it wasn’t a big deal. “He helped me out; would’ve been rude not to.”

Steve held out the brush and comb to Bucky.

“You do it,” Bucky said. “I don’t know how that thing works.”

“You don’t remember how to comb your hair?” Steve said, eyes wide.

Bucky rolled his eyes. “No, that thing.”

Steve blushed when he realized Bucky was talking about the scrunchie. “You don’t have to wear this,” he said. “Tony was just being . . . funny.”

Bucky took it out of Steve’s fingers and studied it. The material had been cut and sown so that you only saw half of the shield, and sometimes it was the top half, and other times the bottom half. He wrapped it around his fingers and liked the way the pieces overlapped so all you could see was a hint of what the red and blue represented. “I like it.”

Bucky stepped further back into the lounge. He pulled out one of the chairs at the table and sat. Bucky ignored Steve’s hesitation and waited patiently. Finally he heard Steve step into the lounge, felt Steve at his back.

“Are you sure, Buck?”

“I’m sure,” Bucky said, and felt a sense of deja vu, as if this was the echo of a different conversation they’d had once upon a time before Bucky had forgotten Steve. Before they’d made him forget.

Steve carefully set the brush on the table and then began to gently comb Bucky’s hair, starting at the ends to get out all the tangles before moving up. When the comb moved freely from the roots of the hair to the tips, Steve traded the comb for the brush. The bristles of the brush made Bucky’s scalp tingle pleasantly. He sighed.

Too soon Steve set the brush back down and reached for the scrunchie. Bucky let his fingers tangle in Steve’s for a moment before he released the scrunchie and let Steve pull away. Bucky wondered if it was his imagination that Steve had squeezed his fingers before letting go.

Steve pulled Bucky’s hair back and used the brush to get it smooth before twisting it in the scrunchie. Bucky was disappointed when Steve was done, but he turned his face to Steve and said, “How’s it look?”

Steve’s face did that thing again, and it made Bucky feel warm.

“It looks great, Buck,” Steve said.

“Sorry to rush you guys,” Clint said, “but we really need to get going.”

“Be right there,” Steve said, but he didn’t take his eyes off Bucky’s face. Finally Steve shook himself. “Ready, Buck?”

“Yes,” Bucky said without hesitation. He stood and followed Steve and it felt like the most natural thing in the world.

~*~*~*~

[](http://imgur.com/4Y2Pfhx)

Tony choked when they stepped out of the lounge. “You’re actually wearing it.”

“Yes, thank you,” Bucky said unironically.

Tony goggled, but Bucky ignored him and turned to Pepper. “Thank you, ma’am, for the comb and brush.”

“You’re very welcome,” Pepper said, obviously charmed.

It had been many years since Steve had needed to feel jealous of the girls Bucky went out with, but he felt a twinge of it now. “Stop flirting, Buck,” Steve teased uneasily.

“Yeah, stop flirting,” Tony said. “I’ve got something for you,” he told Steve without taking his eyes off Pepper.”

“Don’t worry, Stevie,” Bucky said. “You’re still my number one fella.”

Steve blushed, and of course Tony would look away from Pepper in time to notice. “Wait, did he just imply . . . ?”

“What do you have for me, Tony?” Steve said, ignoring the question.

“Because that wasn’t in the history books,” Tony continued.

“He doesn’t remember,” Steve said. He gritted his teeth and hoped that his voice was low enough (and Bucky distracted enough) that Bucky wouldn’t hear.

Tony got that look again, the one that said he’d done something he wanted to take back but had no idea how. “Right. I, um, here.” Tony handed Steve what turned out to be a cell phone.

“I already have a cell phone,” Steve said.

“No you don’t,” Tony said, “because you’re leaving it behind in case it can be tracked. Also, this isn’t just any cell phone, this is a StarkPhone,” he said importantly. “With this you can get service anywhere because I bounce the signal off the satellites our government has put in orbit . . .”

“Does the government know you do that?” Nick said.

“If they didn’t want me to use them, they wouldn’t have put the satellites up there and made them look so attractive,” Tony replied, then continued to Steve, “. . . plus, they can’t be traced.”

“Except by you,” Steve said.

“Well, naturally,” Tony said.

Steve automatically pulled out his own cell phone, but he hesitated to hand it over. “My contacts . . .”

“Everyone you know is in this room,” Tony said, plucking the phone out of Steve’s fingers, “and I’ve already put their numbers in there. And you’re in their phones.”

“How did you get my phone number?” Nick said.

Tony ignored him and continued. “I thought about listing your contact as ‘Capsicle’, but I figured that would be too obvious.”

“And you’re anything but obvious,” Steve said dryly.

“Exactly.”

“I don’t want to lose the information in my phone,” Steve repeated. “I’ve got lists in there, movies I’m supposed to watch . . .”

“I’ll keep it safe, I promise. I downloaded something on that one you might be interested in.”

“It’s not porn, is it?” Clint said.

“It’s not porn,” Tony said, but he got a crazy gleam in his eyes.

“We have to go,” Steve said, pocketing the phone before Tony could ask for it back. “Don’t we have to go?” he asked Clint.

“We do,” Clint said. He waited until they’d walked away from Tony and he’d apparently turned his attention back to the flash drive to speak again. “You do realize he probably left himself a backdoor and he could do that remotely.”

Steve groaned. “Let’s get out of here while he’s too busy to think about that. Hey, Buck, you ready to go?”

“No,” Bucky said. He walked over to the box that held his weapons. He picked up the cutters and twirled them with a frown as he examined the clothes he now wore. “I can’t hide my weapons in these clothes,” he said.

“Buck,” Steve began, but Bucky cut in.

“I can’t protect you without my weapons,” he said implacably.

“You’re right,” Pepper said. She moved around the lab and found a duffel bag. “Will this work?”

“Yes,” Bucky said, then added, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Pepper said.

No one commented as Bucky transferred the knives and guns to the duffel bag, except for the pocketknife, which he slipped into the front pocket of his jeans.

“The clothes I wore,” Bucky said to Tony, “were they clean?”

“Trackers you mean?” Tony said still watching the screen.

“Yes.”

“No trackers. Right, JARVIS?”

“That is correct, sir.”

Bucky twitched, but he said, “Thanks.” He added the clothes he’d had on when Steve found him to the duffel. “I can’t fight HYDRA in these,” he said, indicating the sneakers.

Steve tried not to smile. “No,” he said.

“I just scheduled a flight to the west coast,” Tony announced. “If HYDRA’s paying attention they’ll think I’m getting Pepper out of the city and back to Malibu.”

“Good thinking,” Maria said grudgingly from where she sat studying the satellite images she’d pulled up. To Steve she said, “We’ll call you as soon as we’ve executed the raid.”

Steve nodded. He and Bucky followed Natasha and Clint (who left Phil in Pepper’s capable hands) to the elevators. Clint typed in an override and the elevator went to a level Steve didn’t know existed. It opened into a tunnel. Five minutes of walking later they entered another elevator and came up in a building six blocks away from the Tower. They exited the building without garnering any undue attention and found the van idling where Phil said Kate was going to be waiting for them.

Natasha opened the rear doors so that Steve and Bucky could climb into the back of the van. The first thing Steve saw was that someone had thought to bring his shield. He gave Bucky and his duffel bag a look; now they were both armed if HYDRA happened to find them. They sat across from each other, making themselves as comfortable as they could on the floor of the van.

In the front, Kate slid out of the driver’s seat with a soft, “Good luck,” and Clint took her place behind the wheel. As soon as Natasha was in the front passenger seat, before the door had even been shut all the way, Clint pulled out into traffic garnering several loud honks.

Steve braced his feet against the floor, and saw Bucky do the same. He was quiet for a few minutes, thinking about everything that had happened in the last couple of hours, about everything that was going to happen in those ahead. For now Bucky was safe from HYDRA, and at least they were going to be able to cut off one head, but there would still be many left, and this one would regrow if they didn’t burn HYDRA to the ground.

Steve shook those thoughts away. “Where are we going?” he asked Clint.

“A farm upstate,” Clint said. “It’s our retirement, Phil’s and mine, and a non-SHIELD safe house. The only people who know about it are the people in this van and Phil,” he said warningly.

“Good,” Steve said. The fewer people who knew where they were going, the safer Bucky would be. “Thank you,” he added.

~*~*~*~

Two hours and twenty-six minutes later Clint pulled off a bumpy dirt road, dust kicking up behind the van obscuring anything that might be following them, and onto an even bumpier dirt driveway. “We’re here,” Clint said.

Bucky glanced at Steve as they were jostled about in the back. He’d ridden in worse, but for some reason, watching Steve bounce around brought a smile to his face.

“What?” Steve said.

“You threw up on the Cyclone, but this ride didn’t make you sick?”

“I didn’t just eat two corndogs and a stick of cotton candy,” Steve sniffed, but he grinned at Bucky.

Bucky didn’t wait for the redhead that Steve had called Natasha to come around and open the doors. As soon as the van stopped Bucky rolled to his knees and pushed them open, looking around cautiously before he got out, dragging the duffel bag with him. Biting back a sigh of relief, he stretched. Bucky hated being cooped up for long periods of time, something he’d managed to keep from his handlers.

Bucky heard Steve moving around behind him, felt the air shift when Steve stepped up beside him and joined him in looking around. There was a large farmhouse, a barn, and several out-buildings. Clint walked them through the alarm on the back door, told them there was an old truck in the garage in case of emergency, and pointed out a well-stocked armory that made Steve’s eyes go wide in case of an even more immediate danger.

Steve and Bucky watched Clint and Natasha drive away, tires raising a cloud of dust that hung in the air to mark their passage. The two of them walked to the house together. Steve put away the groceries they’d stopped for three towns away while Bucky searched the house from top to bottom, making note of every point of ingress and egress, and creating half a dozen plans of escape.

When Bucky returned to the kitchen, Steve had a pot of soup on the stove and was putting together what he called ‘grilled cheese sandwiches’. “Clint showed me how to make them once,” he said. “Are you hungry?”

Bucky shrugged. Hunger was just another way they could control you.

“Buck?” Steve said, pausing in assembling the sandwiches.

But this was Steve, not HYDRA, Bucky reminded himself. “I could eat,” he said, and was glad he had when Steve smiled.

“Okay, good. I found the pot and skillet,” Steve said as he went back to placing slices of cheese onto slices of bread. “Can you check the cupboards for bowls for the soup, and maybe glasses, oh, and spoons,” Steve finished as he carefully set the sandwiches into the heated skillet.

Eight minutes later they sat down to bowls of tomato soup, grilled cheese sandwiches, and glasses of milk. Bucky didn’t use his spoon; he dunked his sandwich, which Steve had sliced into triangles, into the soup, and drank what was left of the soup from the bowl when the two sandwiches Steve had made for him were gone.

“Want more?” Steve said.

Bucky thought about it. He was still hungry, but his stomach wasn’t used to getting this much food. He shook his head.

Steve washed the dishes they’d used, and Bucky dried when Steve tossed a towel to him. It felt familiar, but Bucky couldn’t remember ever having performed this task before. “Did we used to do this?” he said.

Steve smiled down at his hands in the dishwater as he scrubbed the pot. “Yeah. We didn’t always have hot water, though, or even warm water, so you’d wash the dishes in cold water so I didn’t get a chill, and I dried them and put them away.”

“I’d have dropped them anyway,” Bucky said, and Steve’s fingers slipped off the pot he was setting in the drainer. Bucky caught it before it smashed one of the glasses.

“Yes,” Steve said, covering his reaction. “You were always in a rush to get the dishes dried and put away that you weren’t always careful.”

Steve looked out the window; the sun had started to go down and the brilliant reds of the sky were turning black. Bucky could tell that his mind was a million miles away. Or maybe just a couple hundred.

“When are they going to go in?” Bucky said.

“Probably at dawn, when the sun comes up,” Steve said.

“Do you wish you were going with them?”

“No,” Steve said. “I mean, I’d kind of like to see their faces when they realize I’m not dead, but given the options, I’d rather be here with you.”

Bucky ducked his head at the sincerity in Steve’s voice.

“What would you like to do now? Want to watch television, or something?”

“I’m a weapon, not a guest,” Bucky said reflexively, and then wished he hadn’t when he saw Steve’s expression. “Don’t,” Bucky said, wishing that the thoughts in his head didn’t jump to his tongue so easily in front of Steve, and hating the look they brought to Steve’s face.

He needed to escape, and it struck Bucky that he actually could. “I’m going to go patrol.”

“I’ll go with you,” Steve said, following Bucky as he headed for the back door.

“I’m faster on my own,” Bucky said.

“Buck,” Steve began, but Bucky ignored him. He stripped out of his clothes and left them in a pile on the back porch. Steve made a sound that Bucky forgot about in the momentary pain of the shift.

Bucky didn’t know what made him stick his nose in Steve’s groin, but Steve pushed his muzzle away and said in a choked voice, “We’ve talked about this, Buck.”

Bucky huffed and leapt off the porch. He lost himself in the scents of the farm, familiarizing himself with them so that if anything changed he’d be aware of it. He crossed tire tracks and ducked under wire fences, and heard the cows from the next farm over start lowing in a panic when they sensed his proximity. Bucky didn’t open himself up to hearing Steve’s thoughts, or allowing Steve to hear the jumble that was his own, but the entire time he was on patrol Steve was a comforting presence in the back of his mind.

Steve was sitting on the porch steps when Bucky returned to the house. Bucky climbed them and lay down beside Steve. Steve reached out to lay his hand on Bucky’s head, then paused as if he didn’t know if it was allowed. Bucky opened his mind enough to let Steve feel his emotions and Steve finished the motion. Bucky sighed as Steve rubbed his ears.

“We should probably get some sleep,” Steve said, interrupting Bucky’s snooze.

Bucky considered remaining in his wolf form, but that would be cowardly. Besides, he’d need his thumbs if he was going to use the knives and guns he’d brought. Bucky rose to his paws and shifted, rising to his full height. He grabbed his clothes off the swing where Steve had folded them and carried them into the house.

A scent that Bucky didn’t recognize wafted off of Steve. Bucky ignored it and waited for Steve to close the door and reset the alarm.

“Did you choose a bedroom?” Steve said, keeping his eyes on the floor.

“Yes,” Bucky said. He led the way to the stairs and pointed to the room he’d chosen for Steve. It was at the back of the house. He’d take one in the front so he’d hear anyone coming down the driveway.

“Buck,” Steve said.

Bucky just stared at him until Steve gave up and went into the room Bucky had picked out for him. Bucky then went to his own room and dressed in the clothes HYDRA had given him. He transferred the pocketknife from the jeans, tucked the push daggers into his boots, and stuffed the spikes into the pockets of the cargo pants. He laid the cutters on the bed next to the guns and the leather jacket.

Bucky folded the other set of clothes into the duffel bag and set that next to the jacket. He spread the comforter from the end of the bed onto the floor and settled down to sleep, though he didn’t think it would be possible.

Bucky’s heart was racing when he woke. The remnants of panic fogged his brain and froze his muscles. Bucky had nightmares sometimes when they left him out of cryo for too long and he’d learned to remain silent through them, to slow his heart rate after. Never before had anyone run to his side to see if he was alright, but Steve was standing in the doorway watching Bucky, his voice low as he assured Bucky that he was fine, that it was just a nightmare.

As unexpected as that was, it was the echo of Steve’s voice inside his head, calling his name, telling him he was having a nightmare and he needed to wake up that surprised Bucky into silence.

“Buck,” Steve said, taking a cautious step into the bedroom. “Are you alright?”

Bucky tried to speak, but had to stop to clear his throat, which was still raw from the silent screams. “I heard you calling my name.”

Steve fidgeted. “Yeah,” he said, “I heard you screaming.”

“Inside your head,” Bucky said. Before Steve could answer, Bucky said, “Don’t lie to me. I learned a long time ago not to make a sound during my nightmares.”

Steve looked like Bucky imagined he looked that day on the Cyclone. “Not out loud,” Steve admitted. “Inside my head.”

The haze around his brain lifted as the nightmare receded, and Bucky thought about Steve’s answer. “We do that sometimes, you said.”

“Yes.”

“Strong emotions.”

“Yes.”

“Like nightmares.”

“Yes.”

“And when I . . . fell.”

“Yes.”

Bucky studied Steve, who held himself stiff, like a rabbit hiding from a wolf. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Steve sighed and deflated. “Buck . . .”

“I don’t have a lot of memories that are my own,” Bucky said.

“Nice try,” Steve said. “That’s exactly why I don’t want to tell you this. When you do remember it, I want it to be your memory, not mine. Also, I’m trying really hard not to be selfish. You should go for a run.”

Bucky raised his eyebrows at the sudden change of subject.

“It helps you work off the nightmare.”

That made sense. Bucky had never been able to fall asleep after a nightmare because it had taken him a long time to let the adrenaline ease out of his muscles. “Why is it okay for you to tell me that?” Bucky said as he rose to his feet.

“Not telling you means you’d continue to suffer,” Steve said.

“And not knowing the other thing?” Bucky said.

Steve just gave Bucky a look before turning away. “I’ll start breakfast; you’ll be starving when you get back.”

~*~*~*~

Steve walked down the stairs in the dark. The moon that shone through the windows was enough to light his way. He turned into the kitchen and tried to ignore the sound of Bucky’s footsteps behind him as he continued on to the porch. Steve turned on the light, then got out a package of bacon and the skillet he’d used the night before. He concentrated very hard on laying the bacon in the pan and did not imagine Bucky removing his clothes so he could shift before his run.

The crispy bacon was draining on some paper towels spread across a plate and the eggs were sitting on the counter waiting for Bucky’s return. Steve didn’t want to turn on the television or the radio, so he went out to sit on the porch swing and wait. Steve felt Bucky before he saw him loping out of the dark. He felt a surge of affection at the play of muscle beneath Bucky’s fur.

Bucky leapt up onto the porch and shifted in one smooth motion. Steve averted his eyes to give Bucky the privacy to get dressed. Instead he walked into the house, saying, “You’re right, I do feel better. And I am starving.”

“Bucky,” Steve said with exasperation as he stood and swooped up the pile of clothes Bucky had left on the porch. “Put on your clothes. You’re not an animal, for goodness sake.”

When Steve reached the kitchen, Bucky stood staring towards the door.

“Um,” Steve said, forcing his eyes to stay on Bucky’s face. “Too soon for animal jokes?”

“Did we used to?” Bucky said, taking the clothes Steve handed him, but seeming to be in no hurry to get dressed.

“Yeah,” Steve said, walking over to the stove to reheat the pan for the eggs, glad to be able to turn his back on Bucky’s nakedness. “Dernier started it.”

“Dernier?” Bucky said.

“One of the Howling Commandos. Our unit during the war,” Steve explained.

“They knew about me?” Bucky sounded intrigued.

Steve turned around, forgetting that Bucky was still naked. “Yes. You were our best tracker.”

Bucky hmm’d, then said, “This bothers you.” He indicated his nudity.

“What? No,” Steve lied.

“Your eyes say differently.”

“I just . . . don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable. By staring,” Steve said.

Bucky shrugged. “I’m used to it.”

“What?”

“I had to be naked to shift, and giving a report once I’d returned to human form was more important than covering up,” Bucky said as if it was no big deal. “You smell different when I’m naked,” Bucky went on conversationally.

“What?” Steve said again, the word getting caught in his throat.

“You drew a picture of me naked, so I don’t know why you won’t look at me.”

“You said you didn’t look!” Steve said.

“I don’t remember saying that,” Bucky said.

Steve goggled. “Memory jokes, Buck?”

Bucky gave Steve a little smile, then fell silent as he pulled on the cargo pants. Steve turned back to the pan and started cracking eggs into it.

Steve froze when Bucky said, “I don’t want you to treat me like I’m . . . fragile.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, “I get that. I used to hate that, too, and I don’t mean to do that, Buck.”

“What do you mean, you used to hate it?”

“Before the serum I was sick a lot. I hated not being able to do the things other kids could do. And I especially hated when you treated me different, like I was . . . frail.”

“I did that?”

“Sometimes.” Steve smiled at the memories that were softer around the edges now. “I don’t think you meant to; you were just worried about me. Like when you told me you weren’t hungry so I’d eat more. Or when you took a dangerous job on the docks because it paid more and we needed money for rent and my medicine.”

Bucky was silent.

“It used to piss me off,” Steve said.

“Really?”

“Yes.” Steve turned back to the pan. “Especially when you claimed to be doing it for my own good.”

“Yeah,” Bucky drawled. “I can see why that might’ve pissed you off.”

Steve laughed but didn’t turn around. “Point taken,” he said.

Steve put down bread for toast and made Bucky butter them when they popped up. He divided the eggs and bacon onto two plates and put them on the table. They were silent while they ate. Bucky finished first and Steve slide a couple eggs off his plate onto Bucky’s.

Bucky gave Steve a look. “Turn about?”

“Something like that,” Steve said. He sat back in his chair and tried to pretend he wasn’t getting choked up just watching Bucky eat.

“We were best friends,” Steve said when Bucky slowed down, “but we weren’t _just_ best friends. We were . . . You were my best guy,” Steve said.

“You’re my favorite fella,” Bucky said, not like meant it, but as if it was something he remembered saying.

Steve nodded. “Yes.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, it means we were intimate with one another. Emotionally and physically. The reason I didn’t tell you is because you barely remember me, and I didn’t want you to feel pressured to feel something you don’t,” Steve said.

Bucky was silent for a few moments, digesting that information, and Steve didn’t push him for reassurances, though it was hard not to.

“They thought there was something wrong with me,” Bucky said. “Because I wasn’t like the others. No matter how many handlers they gave me nobody could speak directly to my mind. I thought they were right. Until that day at the cabin.”

“Bucky,” Steve said.

“How long were we intimate?”

“Before you shipped out for England,” Steve said. “And after I found you in Austria. The first time.”

“Do you remember when was the first time we spoke mind to mind?” Bucky said.

“When you were in wolf form? The first time you changed. You were nervous about showing me what HYDRA’s experiments had done to you, but I didn’t care,” Steve stressed. “You were still Bucky.”

“What was the first thing I said?”

“Something sarcastic,” Steve said. When Bucky just looked at him, unwilling to accept that vague answer, Steve said, “I told you that I didn’t care what HYDRA had done to you and that I still loved you.” Steve felt his cheeks go warm and his mind drift back. “And you said ‘ditto, pal’.”

Bucky continued to stare at Steve.

“It was funny because it was the first time you’d seen me since the serum did this to me,” Steve said, gesturing towards his larger frame.

“Oh,” Bucky said. “It’s weird having memories of you looking two different ways.”

“I can imagine that would be confusing,” Steve said. “Sort of like if I’d lost my memory and remembered you as both human and a wolf.”

“What about the other?” Bucky said. “When I was human,” he clarified at Steve’s look. “Who . . . ?”

“You did,” Steve said softly, smiling to himself at the memory. It had been one of the most intense experiences of Steve’s life, in part due to the unexpectedness of it. They’d been touching each other, biting their tongues to keep from crying out, and suddenly Bucky was inside Steve’s mind. There were a jumble of words, but mostly there were sensations. It was like one of those knots, with no beginning and no ending.

“Were you mad at me?”

“No, of course not, Buck!” Steve said. “We were both . . . I mean, we were . . .”

Bucky raised his eyebrows. “We were . . . ?”

“Being intimate,” Steve said, exasperated. “And it actually . . .” Steve broke off, wondering if he should be giving Bucky such detail.

“Actually what?” Bucky said.

“Heightened the experience,” Steve finished, his face burning.

~*~*~*~

“Heightened how?” Bucky said. He probably shouldn’t have taken such pleasure in the flush that covered Steve’s skin, the scent that reminded Bucky of something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

“Now you’re just trying to embarrass me,” Steve said, but instead of shutting down Bucky’s question, he took a deep breath and tried to speak clinically. “Hearing your voice in my head, sensing your arousal, made the experience more pleasurable.”

Bucky nodded. He could see how that would be the case. “Did we . . . ?” Bucky paused, trying to find the words he wanted. “Did we figure out why we could speak to each other?”

“Not for sure,” Steve said. “We guessed that it was part of the whole experiment, that maybe you were supposed to have a handler who could speak to you, but you getting rescued interrupted that process.”

“And I imprinted on you instead?” Bucky said.

“Something like that, I guess,” Steve said, but it sounded like he didn’t like saying that.

“Truth,” Bucky said.

Steve rolled his eyes. “Fine. I’d like to think that you wouldn’t have imprinted, as you call it, on just anyone. But who knows?” He shrugged like it wasn’t important, but his eyes said differently. “Maybe I was just in the right place at the right time.”

Steve grabbed his plate and the utensils and stood. He carried them over to the sink and started drawing water. Bucky knew it was an avoidance technique, and he could see how stiff Steve’s shoulders were. He picked up his own plate and utensils and rose to his feet. Steve’s shoulders tensed even more.

Bucky ignored Steve’s reaction as he brushed their shoulders when he set his plate on top of Steve’s. “I’ll dry,” Bucky said, walking around Steve and taking the towel off the rack before Steve could respond.

Steve finally looked away from the water and glanced at Bucky. “Okay, Buck,” Steve said.

Bucky felt a surge of satisfaction. It was a little thing, but he’d made a decision about his own actions and Steve had accepted it without question.

The sun had started to lighten the horizon when they wiped up the last crumb and hung the rag and towel to dry. Bucky could see that Steve was getting tense again. “Come on.” He grabbed Steve’s hand and dragged him out of the kitchen, not letting go until they stood on the porch.

“Jeeze, Buck,” Steve said, averting his eyes as Bucky shucked the cargo pants. “What are you doing?”

“I’m gonna show you the property. I found a rabbit warren.”

Steve’s head jerked around, and he blushed like he’d forgotten that Bucky was naked. A strange sensation shivered down Bucky’s spine.

“You didn’t eat them, did you?”

“No,” Bucky said. “Why would I eat them?”

“Because you were a wolf, and they’re rabbits.”

“I was kind of hungry,” Bucky said, just to watch Steve sputter, “but I knew you’d want to pet ‘em or something.”

“I’m not going to pet wild rabbits, Buck,” Steve said, but Bucky pretended that the shift made it impossible for him to hear.

Bucky leapt off the porch and ran off a few steps before turning to woof at Steve.

Steve sighed, but Bucky could tell that he didn’t mean it. “Fine,” Steve said as he took the steps, “I’m coming.”

Bucky took Steve all around the property, showing him the creek he’d found, the tree where someone had carved the initials CB & PC, the cows the next farm over that lowed in alarm _again_ , and finally the rabbit warren. Steve didn’t try to pet the rabbits, but his face went all soft. Bucky would’ve patted himself on the back if he could’ve reached.

It wasn’t until they got back to the house that Steve remembered that he’d left his phone on the charger. Bucky was very irritated when all his hard work was reversed by one text message that said they’d started the assault on the base Steve had known as Camp Lehigh.

Steve gripped the phone and Bucky thought it might crack under the pressure. “I need to go work off some steam, Buck,” Steve said as if he didn’t look like he wanted to throw the phone. “Why don’t you take advantage of Clint’s shower.”

Before Bucky could respond, Steve had turned and walked out the front door. Bucky watched for a moment as Steve headed for the pile of wood. When he realized that he was watching Steve merely to observe the way the muscles moved under his skin rather than to make sure he didn’t do something stupid, Bucky quickly turned and headed for the upstairs bathroom.

Bucky turned on the water and pretended that he couldn’t hear Steve chopping wood over the sound of it. Bucky had to read the backs of the bottles in the shower to know what they were for. He washed his hair and even doing it himself felt nicer than the clinical way the techs bathed him. He rubbed soapy water over his body, his hand hesitating between his legs. His cock had always just been a utilitarian appendage, but now he wondered if it would even work for the other purpose it served.

Bucky rinsed off and got dressed in the same clothes so he could carry his weapons with him. The rhythmic sound of the axe drew Bucky out the front door. Steve had made quite a pile already, but he didn’t appear to be winding down yet. Bucky sat on the porch, his feet on the step below, and watched, waited.

Bucky let his senses roam. There was a tractor down the road, a hawk circling overhead – Bucky hoped it didn’t get one of the rabbits because that would make Steve sad – but no other sounds disturbed the morning air.

Bucky rose and walked down the steps. He headed for the shed where Clint had pointed out the truck they could use for emergency purposes. Steve kept chopping, but Bucky knew he’d seen him. A few minutes after Bucky had slid open the shed door and stepped inside to look over the truck in the dim light, the sound of chopping stopped.

Bucky had the hood up and was looking at the inner workings of the truck when Steve’s large frame blocked most of the light coming in the doorway. Bucky bit back a smile; Steve was so predictable.

“What are you doing?” Steve said.

“Making sure our getaway vehicle actually runs,” Bucky said.

“Did you try starting it?” Steve said.

“Starting it?” Bucky said, chuckling when Steve’s face went through a variety of expressions, ending on irritation.

“Asshole.”

“I’m gonna check the oil, then you can get in and start it up,” Bucky said.

They’d added more oil, cleaned off the battery terminals (which didn’t really need it), and even replaced a spark plug (Bucky send a silent apology to Clint for changing out a perfectly good spark plug, but since he replaced it in the box without Steve seeing he didn’t think Clint would mind), and filled the windshield washer fluid reservoir.

“You done giving me busy work yet?” Steve said as he recapped the windshield washer fluid bottle.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bucky said as he closed the hood. “We should take her out for a spin just to be sure.”

“Buck,” Steve said.

“I’ll drive,” Bucky said, already heading around the side of the truck.

“Do you even remember how to drive?” Steve said worriedly.

“I guess we’ll find out,” Bucky said as he slid behind the wheel.

Bucky knew he’d won when Steve just shook his head and reached for the passenger side door. “We can’t be seen,” he reminded Bucky as he swung into the truck.

“There’s plenty of room out here to drive around,” Bucky said. He turned the key in the ignition and then reached out to curl his palm over the shifter knob. He squeezed the knob, and then released it. Bucky glanced at Steve. “What does ‘R’ mean?”

Steve’s eyes went wide. Bucky grinned and shifted into reverse.

They spent nearly half an hour driving around the land, bouncing over little bumps, and spinning donuts. Steve even took a turn behind the wheel. When they looked at the results of their ‘test drive’ after they returned the truck to the shed, Steve said, “Clint is going to kill us.”

The grass was flattened where they’d driven over it, and a large amount of gravel had been spit into the grass from a donut that Bucky pronounced as ‘excellent’.

“I think I saw rakes in the shed,” Bucky said.

They raked as much of the gravel back into the driveway as they could, and then they returned to the house. The closer they got, the more quickly Steve’s feet moved. Bucky wanted to run ahead and grab the phone and smash it, but this wasn’t something he could save Steve from.

There was one message; it was from Stark. *Did you check out my download yet?*

Steve made a sound of aggravation, but he swiped the screen until he found the download Stark had been talking about. He whistled when he opened the document. “Buck,” Steve said. “Buck, do you know what this is?”

“Can’t read your mind,” Bucky said.

Steve gave him a look, but didn’t hesitated to tell him, “It’s a list of all of SHIELDs assets. We can go through them and make a list of the ones HYDRA is most likely to be using as bases of operation and . . .”

“No,” Bucky said.

~*~*~*~

Steve paused in surprise at Bucky’s adamant denial. “Buck?”

“HYDRA thinks you’re dead.”

“Yes,” Steve said.

“They won’t continue to think you’re dead if you start leading missions against their bases.”

“That’s true,” Steve said slowly.

Bucky just gave Steve a look that seemed to say the discussion was over.

“But Buck, I can’t just sit back and let HYDRA get away with everything they’ve done. Especially to you,” Steve added.

“I can fight my own battles,” Bucky said. “And there’s a whole organization out there willing to take on HYDRA. They’ll manage without you.”

“That’s not the point . . .”

“No, the point is that you always have to be the one on the front line, no matter who it hurts.”

“Buck?” Steve said, unable to keep the hurt out of his voice.

Bucky pressed his lips together. “You’re my mission.”

“No,” Steve said. “I’m not your mission, protecting me isn’t your mission.”

Bucky looked off into the air and for a moment he was lost to Steve behind whatever he was seeing inside his own head. “What am I without a mission?” he said. Bucky shook his head and turned, strode out of the house. Steve heard the sound of his boots hitting the porch floor, but he walked over to see for himself, arriving at the screen door in time to see Bucky loping across the field.

Steve took a moment to compose himself. He didn’t know what was going on at his former training camp, but he knew what he had in his hands. Steve hated the idea that he and Bucky didn’t see eye to eye on this, but it only reminded him of Bucky’s admonitions that Steve stay out of the war.

And look what had happened then, Steve thought. He deflated when he realized that all the good he thought he’d accomplished during the war had been for naught. He’d rescued Bucky from HYDRA, but instead of being sent home Bucky agreed to follow Steve and he’d fallen from the train and back into HYDRA’s hands. Steve had believed he’d taken out HYDRA, and had downed that plane in the ice with the conviction that he was doing the right thing only to lose seventy years during which HYDRA had hidden and grown inside SHIELD.

Maybe Steve didn’t have the right to expect Bucky to go after HYDRA with him, but he couldn’t ignore that he’d left the job unfinished. Steve sat down in the living room to read through the list of SHIELD assets. When he realized he needed a pad to take notes on he moved to the kitchen were he remembered seeing an old grocery list. Steve ripped off the top sheet from the pad and sat at the kitchen table.

Steve was still bent over the table when Bucky returned. He was thankfully wearing the cargo pants and t-shirt when he stepped into the kitchen. Steve sat back in the chair and stretched. “Hey, Buck.”

“Hey,” Bucky said, not looking at Steve. “Sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry for, Buck.”

“I don’t know where that came from.”

“I know,” Steve said. He tried not to let on that it still stung, because even if Bucky didn’t know why he’d struck out at Steve with those words, they’d been inside his mind for him to find. “You said . . .” Steve had to clear his throat and start again. “Before, you wondered who you were without a mission.”

Bucky glanced at Steve and nodded.

“You’re my friend, Buck, and that’s all I need from you. If you still want to be my friend. No pressure.”

“Best friend,” Bucky said.

Steve smiled. “Yes. Position’s still yours if you want it.”

Bucky’s shoulders slumped in relief, but his lips twisted. “You know I’m not him though, right?”

“What?” Steve said.

“I’m not the same,” Bucky said. “And not just because I can’t remember.”

“Neither one of us is,” Steve said gently. “I’m a different person from that kid from Brooklyn who thought he could right every wrong. We’ve both been through a lot, experiences that changed us, you especially. But you’re still my best g–, friend,” Steve stumbled over the word.

“That could be my mission.”

“Do you need a mission, Buck?” Steve said, feeling like his heart was being crushed inside his chest.

Bucky fought with himself, but finally said, “Yes.”

“Okay, Buck, then I can be your mission.” Steve wanted to hug Bucky, but he didn’t know how it would be received, so he restrained himself. “Are you hungry?”

Bucky nodded.

“Have a seat, I’ll make us some sandwiches.”

Steve moved over to the refrigerator and began pulling out sandwich fixings. He held his breath until he heard a chair being pulled out away from the table. Steve assembled the sandwiches with his back to Bucky, and began speaking.

“Before the war you tried to talk me out of enlisting.”

“How’d that go?” Bucky said with enough sarcasm to make Steve smile down at the half-assembled sandwich.

“Well, I ended up joining a secret government organization and letting them experiment on me, so . . . not well.” Steve looked over his shoulder to see Bucky’s response. He was frowning.

“Is that where all that came from?” Bucky asked, gesturing at Steve’s . . . everything.

“Yeah,” Steve said, returning to his task to hide the flush crawling up his neck. “They gave me what they called a ‘super soldier serum’.”

Bucky made a sound. “Can it be replicated?”

“If someone knew the formula Dr. Erskine used,” Steve said. “But he never wrote it down.”

“What about your blood?” Bucky said.

“I suppose someone could attempt to reverse engineer it,” Steve said. “Why?”

“My handler told me that your blood was important.”

“I’m not surprised that’s what they wanted,” Steve said. “HYDRA has been trying to perfect a super soldier serum since the war. Probably since before the war.”

Steve carried the plates over to the table where Bucky was studiously ignoring the notes Steve had taken. “You can read them, if you want,” Steve said, tilting his chin towards the note pad.

Bucky ignored Steve and dug into the sandwich. Steve took a bite and realized how hungry he was. They both finished their first sandwich and Steve was in the process of making them each a second when his phone rang. Bucky glared at it. Steve bit back a smile as he wiped his hands before answering the call.

“Natasha,” Steve said, and then frowned when she filled him in on the mission.

“What?” Bucky said when Steve ended the call.

“The base was empty when they got there,” Steve said. “And rigged to blow.” He gave Bucky a weak smile. “Nobody was there to sabotage the bombs. Natasha and Clint are fine, but they lost two agents in the explosion.”

“And you’re taking that personally,” Bucky said.

“Those agents wouldn’t have died if HYDRA hadn’t come after me,” Steve said.

“If not this battlefield, then another one,” Bucky said. “They were agents of SHIELD, Steve.”

“I know that, Buck,” Steve said, “but I can’t help feeling responsible.”

Bucky shook his head. “It’s a good thing you took the serum, because you needed broader shoulders to carry the weight of the world.”

Steve huffed. He set the phone down and went back to the sandwiches. When he turned back around Bucky was reading his notes.

“You said I could,” Bucky said before Steve could say anything.

“I meant it,” Steve said as he set a plate in front of Bucky and then took his seat. Steve picked up half of his sandwich, then put it down. “Listen, Buck.”

Bucky raised his head and gazed so intently at Steve that he lost his train of thought.

“I, um, I just, you don’t have to go with me.” Steve gestured at the pad.

“What?”

“This isn’t your fight . . .”

“The hell it isn’t.”

“. . . and I can’t ask you to put yourself in danger just because this is something I have to do.”

“Okay,” Bucky said.

Steve’s throat felt tight.

“Then don’t ask. I’m going anyway.”

Bucky picked up the pen and made a notation on Steve’s notes.

“Buck,” Steve said, “HYDRA thinks you’re dead.”

“That argument didn’t work with you,” Bucky said.

Steve sighed. “That’s because I’m stubborn.”

“I never would’ve guessed. Besides, it gives us the element of surprise.” Bucky raised his head and looked at Steve. “They’ll never see us coming.”


	5. Chapter 5

Clint and Phil arrived at the farm the next morning in the same white van in which he and Steve had ridden in. They brought a bag for Steve that contained some clothing and the sketchbook from his apartment, a bag with additional clothing for Bucky, and several bags of groceries since he and Steve had gone through most of the food they’d brought with them when they first arrived. (Bucky hadn’t been allowed to eat this much when HYDRA was regulating his diet, but Steve assured him that having such a large appetite was normal after the experiments they’d both gone through.)

They’d gone out running together (this time Bucky had stayed in human form), eaten breakfast, and then showered. Yesterday afternoon Steve had called Stark for assistance getting into SHIELD’s files from the phone, and he continued going through the list of assets, noting the decommissioned bases and doing additional research on them while they waited for their supply run.

Steve tried not to look too excited when Phil handed him a padded bag from Stark that turned out to hold a laptop and a folded world map.

“Where’s Natasha?” Steve said as they unpacked the bags and put away groceries. “Not that it’s not good to see you,” he addressed to Phil.

Phil waved off Steve’s concern from where he leaned against the counter and put food in the cupboard and refrigerator.

Clint said, “She stayed behind to help Maria oversee the mission reports since this was an ‘unofficial’ mission, while Nick informs the WSC of your ‘death’.” Clint made finger-quotes.

“What about Pierce?” Bucky said. Three sets of eyes turned on him and he felt uncomfortable but he didn’t back down.

“Nick’s keeping an eye on him,” Clint said.

Bucky recalled the patch the large man had worn and wasn’t sure if that was a joke until Clint winked at him.

“But seriously, Nick is going to bring Pierce in on the briefings to determine who’s behind Steve’s ‘death’. He figures Pierce will piss himself with glee that we’re in the dark about what really happened, but he’ll want to sit in on those meetings just in case. Plus, we’re putting a tracker in his vehicle and Natasha is going to trail him.”

Clint and Phil stayed for lunch. “I’ll make lunch if the three of you want to go for a walk or something,” Phil offered.

“I’ll show you the rabbits,” Bucky said, leading the way to the porch. He heard a gasp when he removed his clothes, and Steve’s sighed, “Buck,” but he ignored them both in the shift.

Bucky stood on the ground at the base of the steps and shook himself. Behind him, Clint said, “How’s your ticker doing?” He sounded both amused and concerned.

“Shut up,” Phil said, sounding a little breathless.

Bucky looked up at him, wondering if they should be worried, but Clint brushed a kiss across Phil’s lips and Steve looked away with a wistful expression. Before Bucky could wonder what that meant, Steve was coming down the steps with Clint following him. Bucky sniffed the air as they walked the perimeter, making sure nothing had changed since their run that morning.

Behind him Clint and Steve talked in quiet voices, both staying away from the topic of yesterday’s raid. Clint probably because he didn’t want Steve to start thinking about the fact that he was side-lined for the foreseeable future, and Steve probably because he didn’t want Clint to know that he was making plans for his own raids on possible HYDRA bases. Bucky shook his head and led them to the rabbit warren.

When they returned to the house Steve made sure that Bucky was dressed before they entered the kitchen where Phil was sitting at the table with his phone.

“Something smells good,” Clint said.

“You always say that,” Phil said, tipping his head back for the kiss Clint bent down to press to his lips.

“Because you always make stuff that smells good,” Clint said.

“I figured we’d just have sandwiches,” Steve said as he watched Clint take a pan out of the oven.

“It’s not much,” Phil said, “just an egg casserole, but I thought you might appreciate something warm from the oven.”

“It does smell good,” Bucky said.

Phil’s eyes moved to Bucky and the tips of his ears turned pink. “Thank you,” he said.

Bucky nodded, then moved to the cupboard and got out plates, flatware, and glasses for the four of them. If Phil thought there would be leftovers for breakfast he was wrong because both Steve and Bucky went back for seconds even though their first helping had filled the plate. In addition to egg the casserole contained ham, cheese, onions and peppers, and it tasted even better than it smelled.

Bucky felt embarrassed as Phil and Clint watched him and Steve clean their plates. “Steve says it’s the serum,” he explained.

“I’m pleased that you like it,” Phil said, adding, “Besides, you should see how much Clint puts away _without_ the serum.”

“That’s because everything you make tastes good,” Clint said.

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Phil said archly.

Clint waggled his eyebrows. “Wanna bet?”

Phil pretended not to be affected by Clint’s comment, but Bucky could smell that he was. He glanced at Steve and caught that same wistful expression on his face as before. It made something inside Bucky clench tight and even though Clint and Phil had brought them supplies and were letting them use their safe house, Bucky suddenly wanted them to leave.

Almost as if Phil noticed the change, he said, “We should be getting back soon.”

“Sure,” Clint said. “I’ll just help clean up . . .”

“I can do it,” Bucky said. “I won’t drop the dishes,” he added when Clint paused in rising from the chair.

“I believe you,” Clint said.

“You made the meal,” Steve said, even though Clint hadn’t had anything to do with making the meal, “so we’ll do clean up duty. Thank you both for coming out and bringing us more clothes and food.”

“It was our pleasure,” Phil said.

They walked Phil and Clint out to the van and watched until they could no longer see the dust from the tires. For two super soldiers that was a long time. Bucky didn’t move until Steve said, “What was that all about?”

Bucky gave Steve a look, then walked into the house without answering. He was rinsing the dishes in the sink when Steve entered the kitchen. “Buck.”

“Do you like him?” Bucky said. “Clint?”

“We’re friends,” Steve said slowly, “so yeah, I like him.”

“Friends like you and I were friends?”

Steve blushed. “Bucky, no!”

“Then how come you were all . . .” Bucky gestured with his hand, spraying water droplets all over. “When they were all . . .”

“Bucky, it’s not what you think,” Steve said.

Bucky placed both hands on his hips. “Then what is it?”

Steve looked like he didn’t want to answer, but he said, “I remember when you and I were all . . .” He gestured like Bucky had. “And sometimes I miss that.”

Bucky swallowed hard. “Oh.”

Steve looked hopeful. “Were you jealous, Buck?”

Bucky sputtered. “No.” He turned back to the dishes to hide his expression.

Steve carried some the glasses and the empty pan over to the sink. He hovered next to Bucky. “It would be okay if you were.”

Bucky didn’t know what to say, because he didn’t understand what he was feeling. “I can do this,” he said. “I know you’re eager to get your package from Stark.”

Steve smiled and nudged Bucky with his shoulder. “Thanks, Buck.”

Bucky wiped off the table while Steve was out of the room so he’d have a clean surface to work on, then went back to the dishes. Steve gave Bucky a smile when he returned and saw the table, which Bucky pretended not to see because his chest did something unfamiliar. It reminded him of Clint’s earlier comment though, so Bucky poured them both glasses of juice and sat at the table across from Steve.

“What did Clint mean when he asked Phil about his heart?”

Steve’s cheeks went pink. “He’d just gotten an eyeful of your bare ass, so Clint was picking on him. Mainly,” Steve added. “Phil was stabbed in the chest during the, uh, alien invasion.” Steve ignored Bucky’s narrowed eyes. “By Loki.”

While Steve made happy sounds over whatever Stark had put on the laptop, Bucky took Steve’s phone and googled ‘alien attack’. He got a lot of hits, but one right at the top included a photo of Steve with Clint and Natasha, someone in an iron suit, a guy with a hammer, and a hulking green monster. He clicked on that one and spent the next hour reading all about what the papers called the Battle of New York.

“How did you get involved in this?” Bucky said when he’d read enough and his head was about to explode with how much he wanted to scold Steve.

“In what?” Steve said absently, distracted by whatever he was reading on the screen.

“The Avengers,” Bucky said, “aliens, and gods.”

“Oh,” Steve said. “Uh, I agreed to join SHIELD and The Avengers if Fury gave me access to all of SHIELD’s files. After I saw you at the cabin I was, um, trying to figure out what happened to you.”

“Which led to you fighting aliens,” Bucky said.

“Um, yeah?”

“And Norse gods,” Bucky added.

“Yes? Loki’s an ass, but Thor’s nice.”

“The guy with the hammer,” Bucky said.

“I figured you’d be freaking out more about aliens and gods,” Steve said.

“You were turned into a super soldier and I can shift into a wolf,” Bucky said. “It puts things in perspective.”

“Fair enough.”

Bucky set the phone aside and said, “Tell me what you’ve got.”

Steve grinned and told Bucky what he’d found out about the supposedly decommissioned bases, and which ones he thought they should check out first. Next up would be looking at satellite images and getting thermal imaging results. Which they’d have to figure out how do to behind SHIELD’s back. “I think Tony will help,” Steve said.

Steve called Stark to tell him what they needed. In the meantime they spread out the map Stark had sent and Steve marked all of the bases on it, including the two in Austria and New Jersey that they’d already discovered. In a different color Steve marked the bases he remembered from the war, both HYDRA and SSR.

“They’re out there, Bucky, and we’re going to find them.”

“Sure, Steve,” Bucky said. Part of him wished that Steve were small again so he could tuck him away someplace safe.

They spent the next day pouring over satellite images that Stark had procured for them.

“Any of this look familiar, Buck?”

Bucky shook his head. “No.” He didn’t tell Steve that he was usually moved while in cryo, and that he wouldn’t have known what base he was operating out of if he’d ever known the names of the bases at all.

Bucky made Steve go for a run so he didn’t spend all day staring at the satellite images. When he came down from his shower after, Steve was standing in front of the map they’d hung on the wall wearing just a towel wrapped precariously around his waist.

“What are you doing?” Bucky said, his eyes following the path of a drop of water that had been balanced on Steve’s shoulder until he turned in surprise at the sound of Bucky’s voice.

“Bucky!” Steve said, grabbing for the towel his sudden movement had dislodged. “I was just, um . . .” He tilted his head to indicate the map behind him. “I had a thought while I was in the shower and I wanted to check it out.”

Bucky crossed his arms and stared into Steve’s face. “What was so important that you had to come down here before you got dressed?” he said, making sure his eyes stayed above Steve’s neck.

“Oh!” Steve said. “I was thinking about how many of these SHIELD assets are located in the United States.” Steve turned to face the map and Bucky let his gaze drop to the muscles in Steve’s back before he resolutely applied his attention to the map. “The war was fought in Europe,” Steve said, “so it makes sense for SHIELD to have obtained the known HYDRA and SSR bases located over there, but there are an awful lot of red dots here.”

Bucky stepped up next to Steve to study the map. Less chance that he’d be tempted to let his gaze drop again that way. “Most of those are decommissioned missile silos and nuclear bunkers from after the war.”

“I know, but . . .” Steve paused. “If HYDRA infiltrated SHIELD, it would make sense that they created bases in North America. There’s an old munitions bunker in Pennsylvania,” he mused. “That’s not far from New York or D.C., especially by Quinjet. California, North Dakota, Colorado, Arizona.” Steve pointed to the dots on the map as he named off the sites.

“You think we should start there?” Bucky said as he took in the whole of the map. There were dots in Scotland, Albania, Canada, France, Latvia, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, England, and Germany, but if Steve thought they should start closer to home Bucky wasn’t going to argue. He was sure, given what he’d seen (and what little he remembered) of Steve’s determination, that they wouldn’t leave a stone unturned.

“Yeah,” Steve said, sounding excited. “I need to call Tony.”

“Why don’t you get dressed first,” Bucky drawled.

A flush crept up Steve’s chest to his neck. “Yeah, I’ll, um, be right back.”

Bucky watched Steve, his hand holding the slipping knot of the towel, take the stairs two at a time. He was facing the map again when Steve glanced back down, but the dots blurred and all he saw was a wide expanse of bare skin.

~*~*~*~

Steve was up early the next morning. He hadn’t been able to sleep, in part because of the way Bucky had looked at him when he’d had only the towel wrapped around his hips, and in part because he and Bucky were going to hit their first target today. Tony had promised to pick them up, but Steve wasn’t good at being patient. Bucky, on the other hand, merely sat at the table sharpening a knife while Steve burned their eggs and toast because he was distracted. Bucky ate them anyway without complaint, which made Steve feel bad.

Tony called to inform them what time their ride would arrive. They already had their bags packed because Steve didn’t know if they’d be returning to the farmhouse. He cared less about his clothes than he did the laptop, map, and his sketch pad. They sat on the porch to wait for their ride, and Steve pulled out his pad and pencil so he could sketch Bucky.

Today Bucky was wearing a tank top with his cargo pants, so Steve concentrated on the exposed muscles in his back and arms, the way wisps of hair fell out of the scrunchie and blew around his face, the single point of the star they’d branded into his side that Steve could see in the low arm opening. Steve’s hand shook as he drew that.

Bucky turned to look at Steve, then hopped back up onto the porch. He sat on the swing beside Steve and glanced at the pad. Bucky didn’t say anything about the subject, just rested his head on Steve’s shoulder and watched him draw.

“My model moved,” Steve said as he shaded.

Bucky shrugged. “I’ve seen enough of your drawings to know you can sketch me from memory.”

Steve’s face heated. He thought maybe Bucky was going to say something else, but then they both heard the hum of an engine. It wasn’t a car, or the van. In fact, it wasn’t coming from the road at all. Steve raised his face to the sky as he carefully set aside the pad and reached for his shield. Bucky already had both guns in his hands.

The Quinjet dropped its cloak as it landed, but Steve didn’t put up his shield. His mouth fell open when the hatch opened and Natasha strolled down the ramp.

“Natasha,” Steve said, trying not to sound guilty, “what are you doing here?”

Phil, and then Clint followed Natasha out of the jet. Phil was dressed in the suits Steve remembered, though it was taking some time to get used to the cane, while Clint and Natasha both wore black long-sleeved shirts, black cargo pants, and black combat boots.

“Clint, Agent Coulson,” Steve greeted weakly.

“I told you to call me Phil,” Agent . . . Phil said.

“You look very much like Agent Coulson right now,” Steve said.

Phil tugged one of the shirt cuffs as if it might have had the temerity to become uneven. “I’ve missed my suits. But I’m still Phil. Besides, none of us are acting as SHIELD agents right now.”

“I don’t understand,” Steve said.

“Did you really think Stark would let you go on one of these missions alone?” Natasha said. She shoved a bundle of clothes at Steve. “Here are your uniforms. Get changed.”

Steve and Bucky returned to the house and did as she asked. Steve kept glancing out the window as he changed. Phil stood looking around the property with his usual air of imperturbability while Clint and Natasha talked about something that made Natasha roll her eyes and Phil’s lips twitch before he got them back under control.

The ‘uniform’ they were given consisted of a long-sleeved top and bottoms that reminded Steve of athletic under armor, another long-sleeved shirt with a high neck that Steve recognized as kevlar enforced and zippered pockets in the sleeves, cargo pants with lots of pockets that made Bucky happy, and combat boots, all in black.

Steve thought he would be too hot with all of that on, but he was actually quite comfortable. When he mentioned it to Natasha, she told him that the compression-type under garments were _actually_ under armor which Stark had been developing to be light and breathable and also stop a bullet.

“Where to, Cap?” Clint said from the pilot’s seat.

“Just Steve,” Steve said.

“Not Cap _or_ Steve,” Phil said. “We’ll have code names.”

“Is that necessary?” Steve said. Beside him Bucky groaned.

“I get that you’re used to being large and in charge, Steve,” Natasha said, “but when you’re trying to remain incognito you don’t go around announcing your presence.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “I know that, but . . .”

“For this mission we’ll just use numbers,” Phil said, interrupting Steve. “You’ll be One,” he told Steve. “Sergeant Barnes will be Two, Natasha will be Three, and Clint Four.”

“Why am I Four?” Clint whined.

“Because you act like a four-year old,” Phil replied immediately, almost as if he’d been expecting the complaint. “I’ll be Zero.”

“Now that _that’s_ settled,” Clint said, “where to?”

Steve glanced at Bucky, who nodded in support, then said, “Colorado.” He gave Clint the coordinates for the decommissioned missile silo in Deer Trail and Clint input the information.

The Quinjet could fly about four times faster than a regular commercial plane, so the flight took a little under an hour. It still seemed to take forever. Bucky and Natasha closed their eyes and fell into some kind of meditative trance, it seemed. Phil had pulled up a map of the silo and the area surrounding it and was studying it. Clint was busy with the flight controls.

Steve could usually rein in his impatience, but today it was at the forefront. He’d already fought this battle once before, yet here he was again, getting ready to face the forces of HYDRA. Steve wished he could whip up a righteous anger, but he couldn’t lie to himself. Although Steve would do anything to end HYDRA for good this time, this fight was more about Bucky than it was about SHIELD.

Bucky sat close enough to Steve that he could move his arm just a little bit to touch Bucky’s arm. Bucky pressed back, and something in Steve settled.

“Five minutes out,” Clint announced.

“We’re going to land in this clearing,” Phil said, pointing it out to Steve. “The Quinjet will remain cloaked. The four of you will scout the perimeter while Stark gets us real-time satellite images.”

“Tony’s involved in this mission, too?” Steve said, surprised, although he wasn’t sure why anything these people did could surprise him anymore.

“Did you really think you could exclude him?” Natasha said wryly.

Steve had to accede the point.

Natasha was handing out earbuds when Bucky leaned in close to Steve and said, “Steve, I could do a recon . . .”

“No,” Steve said softly, but firmly. “If they see a wolf, they’ll be suspicious.”

Bucky scoffed. “They wouldn’t see me.”

“I saw you,” Steve countered.

“That’s different,” Bucky said, with a slight blush.

“Why?” Steve couldn’t help himself asking.

Bucky blushed, but gave Steve a defiant look and answered. “I was . . . surprised. I didn’t expect you to smell so . . . familiar.”

“What am I missing?” Phil said.

“Oh, yeah,” Clint drawled, glancing at Steve. “We might’ve forgotten to mention that.”

“Would anyone care to mention it now?” Phil said.

“Snarky,” Bucky muttered, mirroring Steve’s own thoughts.

Steve glanced at Bucky and silently sought his approval.

“They know?” Bucky said, indicating Clint and Natasha.

“Um, yeah,” Steve said. “And Fury. I needed their help,” he quickly went on to explain, “so I had to tell them why I knew you were alive.”

“I’m not disapproving,” Bucky said. “It’s not like my handlers cared who knew. It’s just . . . can I decide who knows from now on?”

“Yes,” Steve said. “Bucky, of course, I’m sorry, I . . .”

“It’s alright, Stevie,” Bucky said, laying a hand on Steve’s arm. Bucky went on, not understanding just how affected Steve was by Bucky using the nickname. “I can turn into a wolf,” he told Phil.

“You’re a werewolf,” Phil said evenly.

Bucky made a face. “No. The moon’s got nothing to do with it. HYDRA experimented on me when I was captured during the war. They wanted Steve. Instead they got a man who can turn into a wolf at will.”

“He’s the Winter Soldier,” Natasha added, and Phil looked at her.

“I thought that was a myth.”

“Winter Wolf,” Clint chortled. “Figure out what we’re doing, because we’re landing in ten, nine . . .”

“Alright,” Phil said. “I agree with Steve on this one. If they know you can assume the form of a wolf, then you will not do so. We don’t want to do give them any reason to believe that you and Steve aren’t actually dead. And if you won’t do it for your sake, do it for Steve’s. Same for you,” Phil reminded Steve. “If they have any suspicions that one of you is alive, it will raise suspicions about the other.”

After Clint landed the jet the four of them put on vests, balaclava masks to cover their faces, and helmets. “Anonymity is the key,” Phil said equably when he saw Steve’s hesitance. Steve felt strange in all this gear when he normally just wore his Captain America uniform, but Natasha and Clint didn’t seem to share his discomfort.

“You get used to it,” Bucky said.

Steve recalled the leather and metal contraption Bucky had worn in Venezuela, and he nodded, though more in understanding than agreement.

They gathered around Phil and the StarkPad he held showing a satellite view of the silo. He gave them instructions and sent them on their way with a, “Good luck, and keep in touch.”

The mission was a bust. The silo was abandoned and, aside from graffiti, there was no indication that HYDRA or anyone else had been using it. The same held true with the munitions factory in Pennsylvania, the silo at Vandenberg AFB in California, the complex at Beale AFB, California, the silo in Sahuarita, Arizona, and the Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex in the middle of nowhere, North Dakota.

Steve was getting discouraged, and he wasn’t hiding it very well.

“Narrowing them down and crossing them off the list is important,” Bucky said.

Steve sighed. “I know.” He glanced at Bucky who sat on the couch studying the map pinned to the wall. (When Clint had seen it, he’d raised an eyebrow and Steve had offered to pay for any damage. Clint had said something about Phil killing him if he accepted recompense in any form from Steve.) “When did you become so wise?”

“I’ve always been wise,” Bucky said, skirting the loaded topic.

“Alright, one more in the states before we go further afield?” Steve said, pointing to their next target. “Where do you think we should go first over here?” He moved his attention to Europe and traced his finger in a path from red dot to red dot, starting in Scotland, then to France, Germany, Lithuania, Latvia, Albania, and Kazakhstan. “Would Russia be too obvious?”

Steve glanced at Bucky, who was absently rubbing his side through his shirt. Steve knew what lay under Bucky’s hand: the star they’d branded him with.

“Gotovy k soblyudeniyu,” Bucky muttered.

“What?” Steve said.

Bucky raised his gaze to meet Steve’s. “Commands were given to me in Russian.”

“So we can’t count out the bases located in Russia,” Steve said, turning back to face the map to give Bucky some privacy, and so Bucky didn’t see the expression on his own face.

“Do you remember when I told you that there were others like me?” Bucky said.

Steve hesitated, then turned to face Bucky. “I remember.”

“Can we save them?”

Steve opened his mouth, then closed it. “I don’t know, Bucky. I don’t know . . . how far gone they are.”

“They didn’t ask for this, either,” Bucky said, then he shrugged. “Most of them didn’t.”

“Do you know where they are?” Steve said gently.

Bucky shook his head. “We, the Winter Soldiers, live longer than our handlers. I never had anyone speak to me in my mind, not that I could remember,” he clarified. “But they . . . when their handlers died they became uncontrollable. They tried different handlers, but finally they just left them in cryo. Too unstable to use, to expensive to kill,” Bucky said bitterly.

“Buck,” Steve said, moving closer to the couch. “We’ll do everything we can, okay?”

Bucky nodded. Without looking at Steve he said, “I’m gonna go for a run.”

After Bucky was gone, Steve turned back to the map and studied the bases located in Russia.

~*~*~*~

The next day they headed for a small town in the Adirondacks called Lewis near the AFB in Plattsburgh, New York.

“Lake Placid is on my list of places to visit,” Steve said quietly to Bucky. “The 1980 Olympics took place there.”

“The US hockey team beat the Soviet Union that year,” Bucky said. He could tell he’d surprised Steve.

“Yes, I’ve read about that. How did you know?”

“They’re still upset about it,” Bucky said dryly, causing Steve to laugh. Bucky liked the sound and he vowed to make it happen as often as possible. Steve carried too much weight on his broad shoulders. If Bucky’s memories were correct, Steve had done that even when his shoulders were much more slight. But there came a time when even the broadest of shoulders needed a rest.

The flight to Lewis was quick. Clint landed the jet in a clearing and the four of them gathered around Phil for instructions. The satellite image Stark provided showed no movement, and the thermal imaging had come back negative. Still, they had to check it out. They separated, each approaching the silo from a different direction.

There was an overgrown path and old scents, but nothing that caused Bucky to go on alert. He met Steve at the silo. Clint and Natasha stayed in the trees to cover them. The hatch was covered with rust. Steve sighed in disappointment as he reached for the wheel. Bucky recognized the smell of oil just as Steve caught himself from falling when the wheel turned much more easily than he’d expected.

Steve looked at Bucky. He recognized the banked excitement in Steve’s eyes. Steve signaled to Clint and Natasha; Clint relayed the message to Phil in the jet. Bucky switched his gun for two throwing knives and placed his back against the silo. Steve turned the wheel and pulled the hatch open. The moment there was enough space for him to squeeze through Bucky slipped inside.

The lights automatically came on, which supported Bucky’s deduction that there was no one inside the silo since they wouldn’t be working in the dark. Still, the wheel had been oiled for a reason. Bucky glanced around the small space he’d stepped into; there was an electrical box with push buttons and a tight circular staircase leading down into the silo. Everything was covered with rust.

Bucky glanced down the elevator shaft; he could see water shimmering in the depths of it. The place appeared deserted, but the oiled wheel itched at the back of Bucky’s mind – there had to be a reason for it. He started down the stairs with Steve at his back. Three levels down things changed. A room had been built into the elevator shaft and Bucky realized that the shimmer of water he’d seen had been an illusion to protect this room from discovery.

Steve tried the door; it was locked. There was another rust-covered electrical box outside the room, but when Bucky tried to pull off the cover it swung open to reveal a state-of-the-art keypad hidden beneath it.

“You don’t happen to know the password, do you?” Steve said without much hope.

Bucky shook his head.

Steve tested the strength of the door. “Maybe we can cut through it.”

“Something like that might set off a self-destruct,” Phil said in their ears. “Is the keypad hackable?”

“I . . . don’t know,” Steve said, glancing at Bucky.

Bucky shrugged.

Steve took a photo of the box and sent it to Phil. A moment later Phil said, “I know someone who might be able to help.”

Steve, Bucky, and Natasha remained behind to guard the silo while Clint and Phil went on a retrieval mission.

“Do you know what’s down there?” Steve said.

“Not for sure,” Bucky said. “It’s unmanned so it could be a weapons cache.”

“Or?” Steve said.

“Don’t get your hopes up, Stevie,” Bucky said.

“I won’t,” Steve lied.

Bucky didn’t call him on it. “Information storage.”

Steve hesitated. “You mean . . .”

“A big honking computer with all of HYDRA’s information on it,” Natasha said.

“That would be . . .” Steve said. He broke off and breathed heavily.

Bucky thought he might be having an asthma attack, then he remembered that Steve didn’t get them anymore.

“Or it could just be a safe house,” Bucky said in a futile attempt to rein in Steve’s hopes.

Two hours later the jet returned. The girl they brought with them complained about having to wear the balaclava, but Bucky ignored her and focused on Phil, who had refused to remain in the jet despite the steep steps and his continuing need for the cane. The balaclava didn’t quite go with the suit he wore.

It took the girl three minutes to hack the keypad. “That was so simple I could’ve walked you through it, AC.”

Phil dragged her back up the staircase. Steve and Bucky waited until they got the okay, then they pushed the door open. No one or thing shot at them, gas wasn’t released to incapacitate them, the structure didn’t shake with an explosion. Automatic lights came on and Steve and Bucky both gaped.

Bucky would’ve been happy with a weapons cache, but Steve was grinning from ear to ear at the sight of the computer servers that filled the room. “Bucky,” Steve breathed, reaching out to grip Bucky’s wrist.

Steve relayed the information to the others while Bucky stepped further into the room, cooled to keep the servers from overheating. Phil returned with girl who just rolled her eyes when Phil called her ‘Five’.

“We need to get into these servers without anyone knowing we’re here,” Phil said.

“You wound me, AC.”

“Zero,” Phil reminded her.

“You’re a ten to me,” Five said, earning a snort from Clint.

“First check the security,” Bucky said before she could get started. “There should’ve been alarms, cameras.” These information depos were unmanned, but it shouldn’t have been unprotected.

“On it.”

After a few minutes Five directed them to what she called a smoke detector inside the room. Bucky climbed up onto a desk and ripped it out of the ceiling.

“You can just . . . flip those things open,” Five said.

Bucky flipped it open; a camera was mounted inside it. He jerked back before he recalled that his face was hidden.

Five took the battery and tested it. She sighed. “Someone didn’t follow the rule about replacing batteries in your smoke detector when you reset your clocks.”

“You’re saying that the only reason they didn’t blow this silo up with us in it was because of a dead battery?” Phil said.

Five told them where to find the other hidden cameras and Steve and Bucky left her with Phil to go check them out. All of the batteries were dead.

“That seems kind of . . . unlikely,” Steve said.

Bucky grunted. It did feel like too much of a coincidence that every single battery in the cameras were dead.

“I’d hate to be the guy who was supposed to change these batteries when Pierce finds out,” Steve said with badly disguised glee.

Bucky glanced at Steve. “You could throw him a party.”

“Maybe I’ll do that.”

When Bucky and Steve returned to the computer room, Five had removed her balaclava and was speaking with Stark.

Phil sighed in their direction. “What have I done?” he said.

Steve patted him on the back.

Phil called Hill and told her about the computer they’d found.

“Don’t think I don’t realize that you’re calling me because you’re too much of a coward to call Nick,” Hill said, but she arranged for a team to keep an eye on the silo in case someone came out to perform maintenance or an upgrade.

They closed up the silo and flew back downstate. Clint dropped Bucky and Steve off at the farm and then delivered Five, who turned out to be named Skye, to Avengers Tower where she and Stark could begin to sort the information they’d uncovered.

Steve was still vibrating with unspent adrenaline, so they went for a run around the property. Bucky shifted into his wolf form. He liked that they could share thoughts easily this way, and sometimes Steve would forget himself and reach down to scritch Bucky’s ears. Bucky liked that, too.

In the night Bucky woke to Steve calling his name. Bucky listened but there was no sound, not even the sound of Steve breathing. Bucky stood quickly and headed for the doorway only to have it blocked a moment later when Steve appeared. He was flushed and a sheen of sweat covered his skin. He was breathing heavily now, and he smelled of arousal.

“Bucky,” Steve said, sounding appalled. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean . . .”

Bucky didn’t understand what Steve was talking about. “What happened?”

Steve’s flush deepened. He smelled of mortification. “I was, um, touching myself.”

Bucky nodded for him to continue.

“I swear I didn’t mean to, Buck,” Steve said earnestly, “but I . . . thought of you, and then my mind just sort of . . . reached for you. I was kind of overcome with . . .” Steve shook his head. “But that’s no excuse. I shouldn’t have done it. Please, forgive me.”

Bucky opened his mouth to ask Steve why he needed forgiveness, and then he recalled the dream he’d been having before he woke. It had been pleasant, pleasurable even. There hadn’t been any faces, no voices until the cry that woke him, just sensation. Bucky glanced down at the front of himself where there was a slight swelling inside his cargo pants.

“I forgive you, Stevie,” Bucky said, and Steve sagged in relief.

“Thank you, Buck. I can’t tell you how sorry I am . . .” Steve trailed off.

“Don’t beat yourself up about it, Steve,” Bucky said.

Steve returned to his room, but Bucky could tell that he was lying awake. Bucky did the same. He touched himself through his pants, felt a spike of pleasure. He could see why Steve might’ve lost himself to such a thing. Bucky took his hand off himself and closed his eyes. He saw Steve, disheveled and flushed, and recalled the sound of his voice when he’d called out Bucky’s name.

Bucky understood about sex, knew it could be used to manipulate people, but he’d never needed to think about it in relation to himself. Now he couldn’t stop thinking about it. About Steve touching himself and unconsciously reaching out for Bucky’s mind, calling out Bucky’s name. What it would feel like if Steve touched him.

~*~*~*~

Steve got shot in Scotland. Before that came breakfast with Bucky which was awkward, but probably not as awkward as it should have been. Steve wondered if he should try to explain consent to a man who hadn’t been given a choice in seventy years. Before Steve could work up to having that talk Bucky went out for a run. Steve was relieved to put it off.

Steve had just finished the dishes when Tony called to set up a link between Steve and Bucky and the Quinjet, which was on its way to France without them.

Tony and the girl Skye had set up a program, or an algorithm, something that would sort through all the information stored in the HYDRA servers they’d found in upstate New York, but it would take a while for the specific information they were looking for to get filtered out. In the meantime, Steve and the others had decided to continue with the list of SHIELD assets they’d been working through.

Bucky had suggested that HYDRA liked to exist right under the noses of their enemies, like they had done by infiltrating SHIELD, and so the bunker beneath the train station in Paris was deemed a likely spot. They couldn’t send a team in wearing balaclava masks because that would draw too much attention to them, and Steve and Bucky couldn’t show up wearing their own faces because they’d be captured on CCTV, so Steve and Bucky were forced to remain at the farmhouse while Phil led a team of two, the unknown Skye and a disguised Natasha, to check out the bunker.

Steve was drawing while he waited for the jet to land. He’d spent some time reviewing the list once more, hoping to see something new that would tell him to move a certain asset to the top. He hadn’t been able to concentrate on the task, and so he’d retreated to something he could do with his eyes closed: draw Bucky.

Steve only realized that he’d been sketching Bucky naked – the muscles in his back, the curve of his hip – when the screen door opened and closed. Steve slammed the pad shut as Bucky wandered through (wearing pants, thank god). He blushed when Bucky gave the pad a look.

“Any news?” Bucky said.

Steve shook his head. “They’ll land in about twenty minutes.”

Bucky nodded, then leapt up the stairs two at a time. Steve knew that Bucky would spend as long as he could in the shower before coming down to listen in on the mission with him. His skin would be damp, his hair wet and releasing droplets of water to run . . . Steve shook his head. He deliberately opened the pad and turned to a blank page. He didn’t _always_ have to draw Bucky. In his human form.

Steve tilted his head and studied the sketch of Bucky in his wolf form. Warmth bloomed across his skin when he heard Bucky coming down the stairs more slowly than he’d gone up. He forced himself to leave the pad open so that when Bucky sat beside him on the couch he saw the sketch.

[](http://imgur.com/PyuVTGJ)

Bucky studied the sketch for a few moments before speaking. “That how you think I look?”

“Yes,” Steve said immediately. He frowned at the sketch. “Why?”

“Just . . . not sure I’m that . . . majestic,” Bucky said.

Steve’s embarrassment was overcome by his need to reassure Bucky. “You are, Buck,” Steve said.

“I think you’re just a sap,” Bucky said, but his gaze moved back to the sketch.

Steve was saved from having to answer by the blank image on the laptop coming to life. “Can you hear us, Number One?” Clint said, and then chuckled at his own wit. (Steve made a note to look that up.)

“We can hear you,” Steve said. He slid to the edge of the couch, the sketch pad forgotten.

The screen split into two images of the interior of the van they’d taken from the airfield from the cameras clipped to Skye’s and Natasha’s collars. Steve almost got vertigo watching the images as the two women got out of the van and walked down the street towards the train station. Tony (or Skye) had hacked into the CCTV cameras and Phil and Clint were keeping an eye on the train station to make sure no one had noticed the two women, and Phil occasionally spoke to tell them where the security guards were stationed.

Steve leaned back on the couch and tried to relax as Skye and Natasha avoided the security cameras and headed towards the tunnels beneath the station that would lead to the bunker. Beside him Bucky was still and silent. Steve glanced over at him. “You okay, Buck?”

Bucky nodded, but kept his eyes glued to the screen. Steve turned back in time to see one of the images jerk as Natasha jumped off a ladder. Even though the tunnels were not open to the public, they weren’t in a state of disrepair and there were light fixtures up high on the walls.

Natasha aimed her flashlight towards the floor, which was clear of debris and dust. “Someone’s using this tunnel,” she said.

The tunnel ended at a door that had another keypad lock. Skye got the equipment she needed out of her backpack and hooked up to the keypad while Natasha stood guard over her. Steve slid forward on the couch again, his fist opening and closing. There was a beep that meant they’d successfully hacked the lock. Natasha opened the door and entered first.

Automatic lights turned on and Steve got his first look at the inside of the bunker. It was small, maybe large enough for seventy people, and much of it still looked like it had during the war. On tables that had been there since the 40s sat laptops. The cabinets held food, weapons, money in several types of currency, and even fake papers just waiting to have photos attached.

“Safe house,” Bucky said.

They left everything the way they found it so they didn’t give away the fact that they were onto HYDRA (except for the cameras they installed so they’d know if anyone tried to use the safe house), and came home.

“It’s something,” Phil said.

“Yes,” Steve said. “Good job, you guys.”

It _was_ something, and it meant they were on the right track, but Steve was still disappointed it wasn’t more. On the other hand, he would’ve hated for his friends to be in a firefight without him there to back them up. Steve closed the laptop and went for a run. He’d built up a lot of adrenaline watching the mission unfold and he needed to expend some energy.

When Steve returned to the house Bucky was still sitting on the couch. He held the pad and it was open to the page of sketches Steve had drawn that morning. Steve’s breath caught, but when he got closer he realized that Bucky was concentrating on one sketch in particular: a side view of his torso with the star brand.

“Buck?” Steve said.

“Is it ugly?” Bucky said, his finger tracing the points of the star.

“No, Buck,” Steve said immediately. “Nothing about you is ugly.”

Bucky snorted.

“Not to me,” Steve said, then escaped to shower.

Their next stop was Barnton Quarry in Edinburgh. The bunker was located beneath an abandoned building that had been known as the RAF Fighter Command Sector Operations Centre, which would make it a perfect location for a hidden base. HYDRA would love the irony of using a building that had once been used throughout the war by the Air Ministry as a command center.

The site remained in use by the government until it was abandoned in 1983. The bunker supposedly fell into neglect, then more damage was done by a fire in the 1990s. Currently the bunker was supposedly under restoration, and the site strictly off-limits to visitors. A perfect cover for HYDRA.

Information they gathered regarding the site indicated that the area was video monitored and patrolled; the satellite images confirmed that. Thermal imaging showed a large heat signature so they knew _something_ was inside, they just didn’t know what. Steve hoped that the fact that they were attempting to block infrared sensors meant that they’d finally found a HYDRA base that contained more than computers or weapons.

Steve took one last look at the satellite image. There were some nondescript vehicles in the torn up parking area and one security guard patrolling the area. Steve might’ve believed the patch on the sleeve of the charcoal gray uniform except for the man’s military bearing.

The cloaked jet landed on the rim of the quarry above the graffiti covered building. Clint gave Steve and Bucky a chance to get into position, and then he activated a directed EMP blast. As soon as the cameras were disabled Steve and Bucky leapt onto the top of the building and ran across the roof. The guard on the ground ripped his earbud out and looked around alertly despite the noise that must still be ringing in his ear.

Steve and Bucky jumped off the roof. The guard didn’t have a chance to raise his weapon before Bucky landed on him and took him out with one punch. They took the time to restrain him with a plastic zip tie before heading for the entrance he’d been guarding.

“One and Two?” Phil said.

“In position,” Steve said.

“Three and Four?”

“In position,” Natasha said.

“Breach,” Phil said.

Steve and Bucky made a lot of noise going in the front door while Clint and Natasha snuck into what they’d deduced, based on the plans for the original building that Tony had somehow gotten his hands on, was a backdoor. With the EMP disabling the electronic locking system, Steve and Bucky together were able to force the metal blast door open. Two of HYDRA’s agents were focused on the entrance despite the organized chaos going on around them as everyone worked to try and determine why their electronics had gone haywire.

Bucky had insisted on taking the lead, and Steve, figuring that Bucky needed to work out some demons of his own with regard to HYDRA, let him. Bucky took out both agents without blinking. The shots alerted the others that they’d been breached and more agents with guns appeared. Bucky shot until both guns were empty. He holstered them and pulled out his throwing knives.

While Bucky cleared a path straight ahead, Steve watched to the right and left to make sure no one snuck up on them. He also couldn’t take his eyes off Bucky. Aside from the one time outside Caracas when he and Bucky had fought, this was the first time he’d seen Bucky in action since the war. They’d waded in so far that Bucky was now fighting hand-to-hand, slicing with another set of knives he’d pulled out of somewhere.

More agents poured into the room and Steve quickly reloaded his guns. He had a moment to wonder if they were going to be overrun when he heard fighting from the rear and realized that their reinforcements had arrived. Within moments the fighting was over and the base was theirs. Some of the HYDRA agents were dead, but most were merely wounded.

They took the time necessary to restrain those who were still alive and might cause them problems. Natasha sat down at one of the computers with Steve looking over her shoulder, and said, “Tell me what to do, Five.”

“One!” Bucky called. “Watch out!”

Steve reflexively raised his arm as if he could deflect the knife blade or bullet or punch that was headed his way and felt a sting in his side when that proved futile. The agent, who’d apparently been hiding in the bottom of a supply closet, fell over with a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead. Steve glanced over his shoulder to see Bucky lowering his weapon.

“Are you alright?” Bucky said, voice tight.

Steve raised his shirts to check the wound in his side. It appeared that the bullet had found the one spot, besides his head, where he was unprotected since the under armor top had come untucked from the bottoms, probably during the fighting. “I’m fine . . . Two,” Steve said, almost blowing their cover by calling Bucky by his name.

Bucky came over and slapped a bandage over the sluggishly bleeding bullet hole. “Make sure you don’t leave any blood behind,” he said.

Steve touched the back of Bucky’s hand. “It’s okay.”

Bucky just glared at him in response. He stalked away from Steve and searched the rest of the base, making sure that no one else was hiding in a supply closet or latrine. Steve frowned, but let him go. Things between him and Bucky had been charged since the other night and Steve didn’t know what to do about it.

As soon as Natasha had finished giving Tony access to the computers they headed back to the jet. The moment they were in the air Phil called Hill to give her an ‘anonymous tip’ about the base so SHIELD could send in a clean-up crew. They’d decided that, since their missions wouldn’t be secret from HYDRA once they realized what had happened at Barnton Quarry, it would be interesting to see how Pierce reacted. Tony already had all of his communications monitored.

Bucky ripped the balaclava off his head and stiffly removed his vest. Steve moved more slowly. He’d heal from the bullet wound, but it still hurt. Bucky turned on Steve. “What the hell was that?”

“What are you talking about, Buck?”

Bucky gently helped Steve out of his vest and the shirt, his movements at odds with the steel in his tone. “You didn’t get out of the way.”

Steve blushed when he realized what he’d done. “I’m used to deflecting things like that,” he said.

Bucky looked at Steve as if he’d lost his mind. “Are you telling me you forgot you didn’t have your shield?”

Steve shrugged. “Kind of.”

“You idiot,” Bucky said, but his tone was softer than it had been. “Sit so I can get the bullet out.”

Steve could’ve done it himself, but he didn’t argue because he liked that Bucky wanted to take care of him. Steve sucked in air as Bucky extracted the bullet.

“Don’t be a baby,” Bucky said, but there was a hint of concern in his voice.

Bucky cleaned and bandaged the wound. Steve’s physiology meant it would heal more quickly than if he wasn’t a super soldier, but it still ached in the meantime. Painkillers, unless they were the really good ones, didn’t work on him.

Bucky made sure the bandage was secure and then he pulled down the under armor shirt Steve still wore to cover it. “When I saw him pointing a gun at you . . .”

“It’s okay, Buck.” Steve wanted to run push Bucky’s hair out of his face. Instead he took Bucky’s hand and said, “Come here.”

[](http://imgur.com/jYD4a8u)

Instead of sitting on the bench beside Steve, Bucky straddled his lap. Steve’s breath caught, which was a mistake because he didn’t have enough air when Bucky pressed their lips together. It was just a soft kiss, and over much too quickly, but it made Steve’s heart pound. Bucky rested his forehead against Steve’s and they just breathed in each other’s air.

“It’s okay, Buck,” Steve said again, sliding his hand up Bucky’s back.

Steve hoped Bucky might kiss him again, but Bucky slid off Steve’s lap and sat beside him on the bench. Bucky took Steve’s hand, leaned his head on Steve’s shoulder, and closed his eyes. Steve glanced at the top of Bucky’s head and wondered what the hell had just happened and what it meant.

When Steve looked up Natasha was smirking at him, Phil was blushing, and Clint was singing off-key from the pilot seat.

_it feels like the first time, feels like the very first time_

~*~*~*~

It had been two days since Steve got shot. They’d been on stand-down until Steve was completely healed. Steve let Bucky change his bandage and said, “It’s fine, Buck,” whenever Bucky asked.

Bucky had started kissing Steve. Nothing passionate, just a brush of their lips, but Steve blushed each time, and Bucky’s stomach did a pleasant roll that made him want more, but he didn’t know what more would look like, or how to ask for it.

They were standing at the sink doing lunch dishes and Bucky was distracted by the spot where Steve’s neck joined his shoulder. After a lot of one word answers and much hemming and hawing, Bucky said, “Can I do something?”

“Of course, Buck,” Steve said. “Anything.”

Bucky slowly set down the towel he’d been using to dry the dishes and stepped up behind Steve. Steve’s hands froze in the soapy water. Bucky leaned his front against Steve’s back and placed his hands on Steve’s hips so he had something to hold onto. Steve shivered against him.

Bucky placed a kiss against the side of Steve’s neck, working his way down to the spot that had been intriguing him. He opened his mouth and let his tongue tease the spot, then sucked. Steve made a sound like he’d been shot (again) and let his head fall back onto Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky sucked a little longer, then raised his head.

“Was that okay?”

Steve trembled, then said, “It was more than okay, Buck.” His voice sounded kind of rough and Bucky wondered if he was getting a cold.

They went for a run around the property after dinner and Bucky was glad to be in his wolf form again. It allowed him to stretch out his muscles and really run. When they returned to the house, Steve sat on the porch and Bucky laid out beside him. Steve reached out to rub around Bucky’s ears and he liked that.

“I don’t know why you’ve started kissing me,” Steve said, “but I’m glad you have. I like it.”

Bucky was primed for rejection when Steve first spoke, but he relaxed when Steve continued.

“I just, we could do more, but only if you wanted to,” Steve quickly added. “Or we could just keep doing what we’re doing. I like the kisses.”

This was the opening Bucky had been waiting for, if only he could take it. Before he could talk himself out of it, Bucky thought, _Like what? I don’t know if I . . ._

“There’s a lot we can do without . . . doing that,” Steve said, blushing. He pushed on. “Like kissing. We could do more with kissing. And the neck thing you did earlier, I liked that.”

They fell silent while Bucky thought about what Steve had said. The kissing was nice, real nice, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t want to know what more would be like.

“I’m gonna take a shower, Buck,” Steve said. “You just think about what I said. No pressure, though.” Steve kissed the top of Bucky’s head before he stood up and left.

Bucky listened to Steve moving through the house, to the sound of the pipes rattling when the shower turned on. He imagined Steve in the shower, naked, maybe touching himself like he had been the other night when he’d unconsciously reached out for Bucky’s mind.

Bucky waited until the shower turned off and he knew that Steve was in his room. He shifted, straightening from the crouch he ended up in, and strode into the house. Bucky didn’t let himself think about what he was doing until he was standing in the doorway to Steve’s bedroom. Steve didn’t look surprised to see Bucky, but he blushed and raised his eyes to Bucky’s face when he realized that Bucky was naked.

“You draw me a lot,” Bucky said.

Steve’s flush deepened. “Yes.”

“You don’t think this is ugly.” Bucky gestured towards the star.

“No, Buck!”

“Do you find me pleasing?” Bucky said.

Bucky was surprised to find that Steve could turn an even deeper shade of red.

“Yes, Buck, I do,” Steve said softly.

“I would like to do more,” Bucky said, “but I don’t know . . .” He indicated his flaccid member. “I don’t know if I can.”

“Oh,” Steve said. His jaw worked. “Did they . . . ?”

“No. I mean, I don’t think so. I don’t remember that. I just haven’t . . . for as long as I can remember,” Bucky explained.

“Okay,” Steve said. “Well, there are still a lot of things we can do.”

“Like what?”

“A lot with our mouths and fingers,” Steve said, shoulders straightening as another blush crawled up his neck.

_Are you sure, Stevie?” Bucky said._

_Steve’s skinny shoulders went back. “I’m sure, Buck.”_

_“Don’t make too much noise,” Bucky said, “the walls aren’t that thick.”_

_“I can . . .”_

_Bucky’s mouth covered Steve’s before he could finish whatever he was going to say. He pressed Steve into the mattress and his hand slipped between Steve’s thighs._

“Don’t make too much noise,” Bucky said now, “the walls aren’t that thick.”

Steve looked gobsmacked. “You remember that, Buck?” Steve went on without waiting for an answer. “That was the first time you used your fingers on me.”

The image of Steve, head thrown back, chest reddened, mouth open as he gasped and panted, filled Bucky’s head. He wondered if he could make Steve look like that now. “Can we do that?”

“Yes,” Steve said, sounding like someone was strangling him. “Why don’t we start with more kissing.”

Steve dropped the t-shirt he’d been putting on and held a hand out to Bucky. Bucky stepped further into the room and placed his hand in Steve’s. Steve drew him closer. “Let me know if you want to stop at any time, or if something doesn’t feel good.”

Bucky nodded.

“Promise.”

“I promise, punk,” Bucky said.

Steve smiled. “Jerk.” He brushed his lips across Bucky’s, then again. That’s where the kisses had always stopped before, but Steve didn’t stop. He kept placing soft kisses against Bucky’s lips, and then he licked them. Bucky opened his mouth in surprise and Steve licked between his lips.

Bucky was breathing heavy when he pulled back. “Can I do that to you?”

Steve nodded. “Yes.”

Bucky kissed Steve, licked his lips, then licked into his mouth. He gasped when Steve’s tongue touched his and reflexively pushed back. Steve moaned and their tongues moved against each other, almost as if they were battling.

“Bucky,” Steve said, sounding as if he was in pain. “I think I need to sit down.”

“Are you okay?” Bucky said, afraid they might have aggravated the healing bullet wound.

“Yeah, Buck,” Steve said with a little huff of laughter. “You always did make my knees weak.”

“I did that?” Bucky said, wondering if it was a good thing.

“Yeah, you did,” Steve said as he sat on the edge of the bed. He still held Bucky’s hand, but didn’t force him to sit beside him. “And yes, it’s a good thing.”

Bucky gingerly sat beside Steve. “Did I say that out loud, or did you hear my thoughts?”

“You said it out loud,” Steve said, somehow sounding both reassuring and teasing.

“Can we keep doing, uh, what we were doing?” Bucky said.

“Kissing?” Steve said, and now he was teasing.

“Yeah, punk,” Bucky said.

“Yeah, Buck, we can keep kissing. As long as you want.”

“I think you’d need to stop to breathe,” Bucky said. “And eat.”

“I wouldn’t need air or food if I had you,” Steve said.

It was the sappiest thing Steve had ever said to him that Bucky could remember. Bucky didn’t know how to be sappy back. “I’ve seen you eat, pal,” he said. “You’d definitely need food.”

Steve laughed and leaned in to kiss Bucky. Bucky’s stomach swooped and he forgot what they’d been talking about. Kissing Steve was like riding the Cyclone and eating cotton candy at the same time.

“What’s cotton candy?” Bucky said against Steve’s lips.

“Spun sugar, basically,” Steve said, moving his mouth. “You loved it, but we couldn’t afford to buy it often. I’ll have Clint bring you some when they come out again.”

“Okay,” Bucky said absently, more interested in the way Steve’s hot breath feathered against his neck and gave him goosebumps. It reminded Bucky of how Steve had shivered when he’d kissed and sucked on his neck. Bucky did it again. This time he grazed his teeth over the tendon that stood out when Steve tipped his head to give Bucky better access. Steve moaned again.

“Am I hurting you?” Bucky said.

“No,” Steve said, his voice sounding raspy, as if he’d just woken up. “It feels really good, Buck.”

Bucky went back to what he’d been doing and Steve reached out his free hand, placing it on Bucky’s side. Bucky froze and Steve quickly lifted his hand.

“Was that not okay?” Steve said.

Bucky forced himself to relax. “I’m not used to people touching me.” Without hurting me, he didn’t say.

“Okay,” Steve said, drawing his hand back.

Bucky grabbed Steve’s hand. “I want you to,” he said.

“Are you sure, Buck?”

“Show me what feels good,” Bucky said.

Steve kissed Bucky again and Bucky felt like he was drowning. Steve’s hand landed gently against Bucky’s side. He rubbed as if he was soothing a spooked horse, then traced the star with his thumb. Bucky’s back arched with the unexpected pleasure of it.

“Buck?” Steve said.

“Do it again,” Bucky said in a whisper.

Steve did. He resumed kissing Bucky, but the kisses were soft, a highlight to the arcs of electricity that spread out from where Steve’s fingers touched him. Bucky moaned in protest when Steve’s hand left his side, but then Steve brushed his thumb across Bucky’s nipple and Bucky bit Steve’s lip in surprise at the pleasure the light touch sent zinging through his body.

Instead of jerking back in pain, Steve moaned softly. He kissed Bucky harder and brushed his nipple again, then pinched it. Bucky pulled Steve to him and ran his hand down Steve’s back, feeling the play of muscles under his palm. When Steve pulled back, panting, Bucky realized that they’d somehow tipped over onto the mattress, lying on the bed with their feet still over the edge.

“I think I need to take a break,” Steve said breathlessly. He groaned and scrubbed his hand over his face as he fell back onto the bed.

“Thought you could do this forever, punk?” Bucky said. He felt a strange sense of satisfaction at having ruffled Steve despite the cool air against heated skin when Steve pulled away.

Steve huffed a laugh. “Maybe I need to work up to that.”

Bucky wasn’t sure what to do now. Steve hadn’t let go of his hand, but if they were done . . . “I should go,” Bucky said.

Steve’s head turned quickly to look at Bucky, so he couldn’t hide the disappointment he didn’t wipe away in time. “Sure, Buck, if you want. But you don’t have to.”

“You said we were done,” Bucky said.

“Cuddling’s good, too,” Steve said, trying for nonchalant, which meant he thought it was important.

“What’s cuddling?”

Steve smiled. “Come here and I’ll show you.” Steve slid up on the bed so his head was on one of the pillows. He held out his hand and waited for Bucky to decide what to do.

Since Bucky didn’t really want to leave he slid up the bed to join Steve and laid so his head was on the other pillow. Bucky stared up at the ceiling and tried not to jump when Steve rolled over and placed his head on Bucky’s shoulder.

“Is this okay?” Steve asked.

Bucky thought about it. If anyone else had laid like that, trapping his arm and pressing on his shoulder, he would’ve felt the need to fight free, but he didn’t feel that way right now. Bucky nodded. “Yeah, it’s good.”

Steve sighed and the tension bled out of him, and only then did Bucky realize how stiffly Steve had been holding himself, just in case he needed to move quickly because he’d made Bucky uncomfortable.

“Is this cuddling?” Bucky said.

“Sort of,” Steve said. He lifted his torso and moved Bucky’s arm away from his body, then laid back down. Steve draped one arm across Bucky’s stomach, and Bucky, not knowing what to do with his freed arm, laid it across Steve’s shoulders. He felt Steve’s smile. “This is cuddling.”

It felt nice to have Steve close to him, and not just because it would be easier to protect him. Bucky felt warm inside with a different kind of pleasure than he’d felt when Steve had kissed him and touched his chest. “I like it.”

Steve made a noise that sounded like a sob. “I’m glad, Buck. Real glad.”

~*~*~*~

Tony called the next morning and told Steve he had something to show them, and that Clint would be coming to pick them up.

“Hey, Tony,” Steve said, “can you arrange to have some cotton candy delivered for when we get there?”

Bucky had gone out for a run after breakfast, so Steve thought, _Clint’s coming to pick us up. Tony has something to show us._

 _On my way back_ , Bucky thought. _Want me to bring you a rabbit?_

Steve sighed. _Leave the rabbits alone, Buck._

Steve smiled when Bucky chuckled inside his head. He didn’t bother to hide the sketch he was making when Bucky returned, or the appreciative look he gave Bucky when he appeared naked at his side. Bucky gave Steve a look in return, and then sauntered up the stairs. One at a time. Steve watched him go, then smiled down at the pad.

He started a new sketch at the creak of the old pipes when the shower turned on. Bucky standing beneath the spray, water droplets trickling down his neck, his chest. His head was tipped back, eyes closed, arms raised to push the long strands of hair out of his face. Steve was shading in the eyelashes that brushed Bucky’s cheek and trying not to make Bucky’s expression look like Steve was on his knees, pleasuring him.

Bucky was dressed when he reappeared. He sat next to Steve without a comment and watched the pencil move over the page. Finally Bucky shook his head. “I don’t see me the way you see me.”

Steve’s lips twisted into a soft smile. “That’s natural, I think. I never saw myself the way you saw me, even after the serum.”

“Did we have pet names for each other?” Bucky said.

Steve bit back a chuckle. He could remember Bucky complaining that they weren’t dames, but he also recalled Bucky kissing him and calling him sweetheart. “Not really,” Steve said. “We mainly called each other things like ‘punk’ and . . .”

“Jerk,” Bucky filled in.

“Yeah. But once in a while you’d get all sappy and call me ‘sweetheart’. Why? Did you want to?”

Bucky shook his head quickly. “I just wondered. Were we . . . ?” He shrugged, like he didn’t know how to finish the question.

“We shared an apartment after my mom died,” Steve said, laying the pencil down. “And the area we lived in wasn’t too bad, but we still had to be careful not to let people know we were sweet on each other. Things were different then; it could get you beat up if the wrong people found out.”

“What about now?”

“Well, I suppose you still have to be careful because some people are intolerant, but two men, or two women, can get married now.”

“Married,” Bucky said thoughtfully.

“You know, do you take this man, and til death do us part.”

Bucky snorted. “I guess we got them beat, since even death couldn’t part us.”

Steve let out a surprised laugh. “Bucky, that’s not funny,” he said, but he still chuckled at the expression on Bucky’s face.

Steve and Bucky packed a bag in case they needed to stay in the city overnight and they were waiting on the porch when the jet landed.

“Why is Tony buying a cotton candy machine?” Clint said when Steve and Bucky were buckled in.

Steve sputtered and blushed, unable to look at Bucky. “I just wanted him to get some cotton candy, not buy a machine.”

“You really should’ve talked to Pepper then,” Phil said. “Or anyone besides Stark, really.”

Bucky waited until they were in the air to reach over and touch Steve’s hand. Steve’s face still felt hot, but he looked at Bucky.

“Cotton candy?”

“It was supposed to be a surprise,” Steve said.

Bucky looked like he wanted to smile. “Do I like surprises?”

“You like good ones,” Steve said. “I was hoping you’d think this was a good one.”

When the four of them arrived in Tony’s lab he was standing in front of the cotton candy machine he’d had delivered. “This shouldn’t be that hard,” he whined.

“It probably wouldn’t be if you read the instructions,” Pepper said in a reasonable tone.

“I don’t need the instructions. I’m Tony Stark. I built a miniaturized arc reactor and an iron man suit, I can figure out how to make cotton candy.”

“Phil!” Pepper said when she saw them, almost sounding relieved. She slapped the instructions against Tony’s chest before heading over to greet them, forcing him to grab at the booklet before it fell onto the floor.

Tony turned away from the machine and held out his arms. He noticed he still held the instructions and dropped them on the cotton candy machine stand. “Capsicle and Winter Wolf! I’ve missed you.”

“We talk everyday, Tony,” Steve reminded him.

“It’s not the same,” Tony said. He rubbed his hands together. “Okay, so, your buddy Pierce made some phone calls. He encrypted it so no one could listen in.”

“Does that mean you didn’t hear anything?” Bucky said.

“Oh ye of little faith,” Tony said. “He was using an encryption program I created for SHIELD.”

Tony pressed a button and Pierce’s voice filled the room. Bucky flinched. Steve reached out to take Bucky’s hand, uncertain whether the gesture would be welcome, but Bucky squeezed Steve’s fingers tight enough to break them if he’d been anyone other than a super soldier.

“He was pissed about Scotland.” Tony chortled. “And he still thinks we’re getting our information from the hard drives SHIELD confiscated from the base in Austria.”

“We know this already,” Bucky growled.

“Yes,” Tony said unfazed, “but what you didn’t know is that he sent out an order to every base to be on the alert.” Tony paused a beat. “And I . . .”

“We!” Skye called.

“We,” Tony grudgingly admitted. “Followed the signals. JARVIS.”

A holographic world map appeared in thin air with over a dozen yellow blinking lights.

“How can we be sure this isn’t a test or trap of some kind?” Phil said.

Tony bounced on his toes. “Because we have confirmation.”

Skye took pity on them all and explained. “We got a hit from the data on HYDRA’s servers. It matches one of the bases Pierce contacted.”

One of the blinking lights turned from yellow to red.

“When to we leave?” Bucky said, asking the question that had been on the tip of Steve’s tongue.

“Not so fast, Ice, Ice Babies. There’s something else.”

“What is it, Tony?” Steve said impatient for them to be on their way.

“A proposal,” Tony said. “I think we should turn this ‘project’ over to The Avengers.”

“And leave Bucky and me out of it?” Steve said. “No way, Tony!”

“That’s not what I said . . .”

“I can’t go as part of The Avengers.”

“You can’t go as part of The Avengers as Captain America,” Tony said.

“That’s what I just said.”

“No, it isn’t.” Tony shook his hands to silence Steve when he started to argue. “But the point is, you’re going on the missions now because . . . ?” He waited for Steve to respond.

“Because my identity is hidden?”

Tony touched his nose and pointed to Steve. “Exactly! And your identity would still be hidden. JARVIS!”

A suspended curtain that Steve hadn’t paid much attention to fell to the floor in a puddle to reveal two mannequins wearing costumes with masks that covered most of the face.

“What are those?” Bucky said before Steve could.

“Your new uniforms,” Tony said, sounding very pleased with himself.

Steve was gobsmacked. “Tony, I . . .”

“You’re going to let me join The Avengers?” Bucky said warily.

“As a junior member,” Tony said.

“Tony,” Pepper said.

“Okay, fine, a full-fledged member, but the health insurance doesn’t kick in until you’ve been with us for six months.”

“He’s joking,” Pepper said.

“What’s health insurance?” Bucky said.

“Not important,” Tony said, then gave them an expectant look. “Well?”

“You just want to go on the missions,” Steve said reproachfully.

“Well, duh!”

“What about everyone else?” Steve said, glancing around the room where two of The Avengers stood. “You can’t just make this decision unilaterally, Tony.”

“Why not?” Tony said. “Don’t answer that. I cleared it with Katniss and the lovely Widow; Thor is out of reach and Banner isn’t taking any calls right now.”

“You’re both alright with it?” Steve said.

Both Clint and Natasha assured Steve that they were.

“We’d only be adding one person to our ranks,” Phil said, “but it might be useful to have Stark on-site.”

“Might be?” Tony choked.

“More importantly,” Phil said, “if these missions are conducted out in the open by The Avengers they can’t be swept under the rug by Pierce or HYDRA.”

Steve’s gaze moved around the assembled group awaiting his answer, all looking at him expectantly. “Can we have a minute?” he said.

Tony sputtered. “Who needs a minute when asked to join The Avengers?”

“Of course you may,” Pepper said, drawing Tony away.

The other three gave Steve understanding looks and left him alone with Bucky.

As soon as there was some distance between them and the others, Steve turned to Bucky to see if he could read his feelings from his expression. He couldn’t. “What do you think, Buck?”

Bucky’s jaw worked. “I think the world’s gonna have a problem when they find out that a Winter Soldier is a member of The Avengers.”

“That’s their problem,” Steve said defensively.

Bucky gave him a look.

“Okay, fine,” Steve said, “maybe there would be some blowback. At first. But you were Sergeant James Barnes before you were captured and brainwashed by HYDRA and after we get rid of HYDRA for good people will see that.”

When Bucky didn’t say anything right away, Steve went on. “Or it could just be temporary if you don’t want to remain part of The Avengers. Or we could keep on like we are, and if they others have a problem with that, me and you could do this ourselves. We don’t need to join The Avengers. We don’t even need to accept their help.”

“We need their help,” Bucky said. “For the computer stuff, and the satellite images.”

“Well, yeah,” Steve said. “But we could figure something out on our own.”

“Going off on our own would be the opposite of keeping you safe,” Bucky said.

“You don’t need to protect me anymore, Buck.”

“Are you kidding me right now? I’m surprised you haven’t gone off half-cocked and tried to raze every suspected HYDRA base on your own.”

“I would if I had to,” Steve said determinedly.

“I know you would,” Bucky said. “But the thing is, you don’t have to. You’ve got me. And you’ve got a team that’s willing to help. So I think you should accept it.”

“What about you, Buck?”

“I go where you go, pal.” Bucky shrugged. “Maybe after HYDRA’s gone for good this time we can reconsider our future. You never got to finish art school before the war.”

Steve beamed. “I didn’t know you remembered that.”

“I didn’t, either,” Bucky said. “It just popped into my head.”

“That’s great, Buck!”

“You do realize that me getting back some of my old memories doesn’t erase the memories of the things I did for HYDRA, right?”

“I know, Buck,” Steve said, feeling sheepish. “It’s selfish, I know, but it makes me feel good when you remember things about . . . us.” Steve blushed.

“Could you two speak louder?” Tony said. “It’s hard to hear you, and JARVIS refuses to turn up the speakers.”

“Leave them alone, Tony!” five different voices said.

“What’s taking so long?” Tony whined. “We asked them to join The Avengers, not some boy band.”

Steve gave Bucky a look. “Are you sure about this?”

Bucky shrugged. “We already have to deal with him, how much worse could it be?”

“You really don’t want to know,” Steve said.

“Are you trying to talk me out of this, Rogers?”

Steve shook his head. “I just can’t believe you’re going to join The Avengers. We’ll officially be on the same team again.”

“Yeah, well,” Bucky said, “someone’s got to look after that little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight.”

Steve’s eyes stung. “I want to hug you right now, so if that’s something you don’t want . . .”

Instead of answering, Bucky stepped closer and pulled Steve into a hug. Steve wrapped his arms around Bucky and held on as if he could change the past with the fierceness of his love for Bucky.

“You know why I’m doing this, don’t you?” Steve said. He couldn’t actually change the past, but he was going to make sure that HYDRA wasn’t around to do what they’d done to Bucky, and to the other Winter Soldiers, to anyone else.

“Yes,” Bucky said. “And you know I want to destroy HYDRA as much as you do, right, pal? As long as they’re around, you’re in danger.”

Nothing had really changed, but it seemed like everything had changed and Steve felt kind of giddy over it. He pulled back just enough to see Bucky’s face, then he pressed a kiss to Bucky’s lips. Steve blushed when someone (Steve figured it was Tony, but it turned out to be Skye) whistled.

“Sorry,” Steve said, his voice low. “Was that alright?”

Bucky’s kiss left Steve with little breath and no doubt that it was alright.

When they turned to face the others Steve’s face was red and his lips felt swollen. He tried to ignore the grins and smirks gracing many of the faces. (Pepper, on the other hand, was going to get a bouquet of flowers, and Phil got an ‘A’ for effort.)

“Bucky and I will officially join The Avengers,” Steve said.

Tony cut him off with a loud, “Yes!” and a fist pump.

“For the HYDRA missions. After we’ve taken out all of HYDRA’s bases we’ll reconsider.”

“Wait,” Tony said, “you’re putting _us_ on probation?”

“Yes,” Bucky said.

While Tony was sputtering indignantly, Pepper came over to hand a stick of cotton candy to Steve. “Welcome back, Steve,” she said, and to Bucky, “Welcome to the team, Sergeant.”

“You can just call me Bucky,” Bucky said, blushing under Pepper’s regard.

“Thank you, Bucky. Please call me Pepper.”

Tony caught Pepper as she walked away from them. “How come they get the first cotton candy?”

“Because they’re the ones who wanted it in the first place,” Pepper said with more patience than Steve ever had with Tony.

“I bought the machine.”

“We’re the ones who figured out how to use it,” Phil said. He turned around with another stick of freshly spun cotton candy in his hand, pulling it out of Tony’s reach and carrying it over to Clint.

Steve bit back a laugh because he was happy with Tony’s focus directed elsewhere. He turned his attention to Bucky and tipped the floofy sugar concoction towards him. “Try it, Buck.”

Bucky gingerly peeled off some of the cotton candy and placed it in his mouth. Bucky’s eyes went wide when the sugar melted on his tongue. He took some more and Steve watched with joy (and maybe a few tears) as Bucky rediscovered his love of cotton candy.

“Aren’t you gonna have some?” Bucky said.

Steve liked cotton candy, but he’d never loved it quite the way Bucky had. He’d been happy to watch Bucky enjoy it, and then receive cotton candy flavored kisses from him. Steve’s eyes dropped to Bucky’s lips. He blushed when he realized what he’d done. Before he could play it off Bucky pressed their lips together and licked into Steve’s mouth.

Steve didn’t know if Bucky remembered, or if he could just read Steve that well. He didn’t know if it mattered.

“Alright,” Tony said. “No one told me they were going to keep doing that.”

Bucky took his time with the kiss. He gave Steve a smirk when he raised his head, then said, “Hey, Tony, we’re gonna keep doing this.”

A laugh burst out of Steve and Bucky took it into his mouth.

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Russian Translation: Gotovy k soblyudeniyu – Ready to comply
> 
> 2\. All of the decommissioned/abandoned missile sites and nuclear bunkers I use in this story actually exist, though I did occasionally ignore the fact that they’ve been turned into museums or someone’s home. The only ones that aren’t real are the SSR HQ in London (which I only mention in passing in this part) and the HYDRA bases in Austria from the Captain America movies/Agents of SHIELD.
> 
> I got more information about them here: [Atlas F Launch Base, “Boquet 556-5”, Lewis, New York, USA](http://scribol.com/anthropology-and-history/urban-exploration/10-creepiest-abandoned-cold-war-missile-silos/6/), [10 Abandoned Nuclear Bunkers, Missile Silos & Ammunition Dumps](http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2014/12/10-abandoned-nuclear-bunkers-missile-silos-ammunition-dumps/), and [Inside the Barnton Quarry Cold War nuclear bunker](http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/our-region/edinburgh/corstorphine/inside-the-barnton-quarry-cold-war-nuclear-bunker-1-4082465).
> 
> 3\. In case you’re too young to remember the US hockey team beating the USSR in the 1980 Olympics (or just want to relive the glory days) you can read about the [Miracle on Ice here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_on_Ice).
> 
> 4\. The song Clint sings is [’Feels Like the First Time’ by Foreigner](https://www.google.com/search?q=like+the+first+time+lyrics&oq=like+the+first+time+lyrics&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.5279j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8).
> 
> 5\. [Health insurance was around by the 30s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance_in_the_United_States#History), though I doubt Steve and Bucky could’ve afforded it, so let’s just presume that Bucky forgot about it, like he did so many other things.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading my first attempt at writing Steve/Bucky. I really appreciate you giving this newbie a chance, and I hope you enjoyed it. I have ideas for a continuation, although I have no idea when it might get written. If it does, Tony will discover that Bucky killed his parents. (And yep, that memory is niggling at the back of Bucky’s mind.)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [ART: As The Winter Frost Melted In Our Hands](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11197806) by [kjanddean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kjanddean/pseuds/kjanddean)




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